
<^ tj^t'V ii ; ! ivH^ij '! i «f! ^ji ' *.V ' ^- 



^^^^■ Ij i j i I III II II I III I . 




f 



tH2i 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION 



ov 



THE EXISTENCE OF GOD AND THE IMMORTALITl 

OF THE SOUL. 



BT 

EBENEZER DODGE, D.D., 

PBBSIDBNT OF MADISON UNIYSBSITT* 



NEW YORK: 

Sheldon & Company, 






\'^ 



Bntered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1809, by 
GOULD AND LINCOLN, 
fB the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Masaacbuetta. 




N' 



^ 



X 



V 



®t5 
BARNAS SEARM 

JCljts Uolume is Betricateti 

WITH THE 

AWFECTION AND KESPEOT 

OF A 

90BMER PUPIL. 



PREFACE. 



It is now fifteen years since I commenced to give 
lectures on the Evidences of Christianity to the Senior 
class of Madison University. These have so grown in 
extent as to render it impossible for the student to copy 
all of them in the time allotted to the study. This fact 
haa led me to think of putting them into a permanent 
form. 

A few words with regard to the method and design of 
the work may not be out of place. Its governing idea 
iSj that Christianity is its own witness. The nature of 
Christianity, its influence, its relations to Divine Provi- 
dence and to human progress, and its historical triumphs, 
constitute the best evidence of its divine origin. This 
method seemed philosophical, since all the great lines of 
evidence are wrought into the fabric of our faith, or 
touch some of the many aspects of human life and his- 
tory. It is only the sacred records which need the aid 
of strictly external evidence. Here I have limited my- 
self to an examination of the historical character of the 
New Testament. Very many questions of interest and 



▼I PREFACE. 

of importance are left untouched. These belong, how- 
ever, to the province of biblical criticism, rather than to 
the field of Christian apology. 

This method will, if carried out with a fair degree of 
success, help the student to gain a conception of the 
Christian religion in its unity and in its totality. I 
cannot but regard this object as of the highest moment. 
A man is hardly well educated who does not understand 
the religion of the civilized world. To this class, more 
than to any other, Christianity ought to be presented 
freed from the misconceptions of its friends, and from 
the perversions of its enemies. 

My aim has been to present Christianity as accepted 
by the representatives of the Protestant faith. How far 
I have done so, does not become me to affirm. But every 
teacher can alter or omit any portion which he may deem 
defective in this respect. 

I have added an introduction on the existence of God, 
and on the immortality of the soul. I have done this 
because doubt, at the present day, so often roots itself in 
a weak apprehension of the personality of God, and in a 
serious misgiving in relation to the conscious life of the 
soul hereafter. 

It has been my desire to bring the work within rea- 
sonable limits. It may be that, here and there, I have 
been too brief, but I did not wish to preclude the neces- 
sity of an oral or written lecture by the teacher, or of 



PREFACE. VU 

an essay by his pupil, nor did I desire to supersede 

the practice of a discussion in the recitation-room. Still, 
I hope the style is throughout clear and direct. 

While I may venture to claim for the work some 
degree of superiority over others, as a text-book, I would 
yet express my high appreciation of the merits of those 
great apologetic works which adorn the English literature. 

I take this occasion to acknowledge my obligations to 
my colleague, Dr. Arnold, for his valuable aid in examin- 
ing and correcting the proof-sheets, and for the Index 
to the work which he has prepared. 

If this volume shall prove of any service to the youth 
of my country, and to the ministry of '*Ay Lord, I shall 
be amply rewarded. 

B. DODGB. 

Hamiltok, N. T., Jawuiy 15, ISIOL 



CONTENTS. 



•«o*- 



INTRODUCTION. 
I. 

PliOOF OF TEE EXISTENCE OF QOD, . . • xm 

II. 

PSOOF OF THE IMMOBTALITT OF THE SOUL, «nav 



EVIDENCES. 



•«o*< 



CHAPTER I. 

THE mSTOBIGAL GHABAGTEB OF THE NEW 
TESTAMENT. 

SECTION I.— The Inteenal Evidence, ....... 47 

SECTION II.— The External Evidence,. ...... 02 

SECTION m.— THE Sceptical Tbeobxes, 70 



X COirTBITTB, 

CHAPTER II. 

CHBI8TIANITY A 8UPEBNATUBAL FACT, 

SECTION I.— The Idba of the Supernatukal, • , 
SECTION II.— The Fact op the Supernatural, 

SECTION III.— The Need op the Supernatural, . • 

SECTION IV.— The Supernatural in Christianity, • • 



81 

90 

96 

1(M 



CHAPTER III. 

CHBISTIANITY A DIVINE LIFE. 

SECTION I.— The Character of the Christian Ijfb, • . • lU 
SECTION II.— Its Divine Type, • • . 121 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHBISTIANITY A DIVINE DOCTBINE. 

SECTION I.— The Idea of Christian Doctrine, .... 125 
SECTION II.— The Doctrinal Aspects of Christianitt, . . 131 



CHAPTER V. 

CHBISTIANITY A DIVINE LAW. 

SECTION I.— The Nbcessitt of an Authoritative Standard, . 14S 
SECTION II.— Christianity the Ideal of Human Life, ... 160 



CONTENTS, XI 

CHAPTEE VI. 

CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE KINGDOM, 

SECTION I. — The Idea of a Christian Church, .... 161 
SECTION n.— The Value OF THE CHRisTiAir Ghubch, ... 174 



CHAPTEE VII. 

CHBI8TIANITY A FULFILMENT. 

SECTION I.— The Ethnic Prepaeatiok, ••••.. 188 
SECTION II.— The Jewish Prepabation, •••••• 192 



CHAPTEE VIII. 

CHBISTIANITY A WOBLD-POWEB. 

SECTION I.— Its Adaptation to Humanitt, • . • • . 2Q(> 
SECTION II.— Its Historical Triumphs, .••••• 21' 
SECTION III.— Chbistdinitt a Fihalitt. • • a • • • 281 



INTRODDCTIOJI. 



••o*- 



/. TEE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 

At the outset, two seemingly opposing opinions forca 
themselves on our attention. Thej maj be stated thus : 
The existence of God cannot be proved : the existence of 
God need not be proved. These statements are, however, 
diverse only in form. They in fact mutually correct and 
explain each other. The logical proof is inadequate with- 
out a sense of the divine ; and the religious instinct needs 
to be met and to be satisfied by the revelations of nature 
and of history. 

Following the method here suggested, we are, first of 
all, to show that man has a religious nature, — that the 
soul was made for God. We shall then be prepared to 
consider how far his inborn spiritual tendencies and crav- 
ings have been responded to in the signs and in the sym- 
bols of an Infinite Living Presence. 

The most direct means we have of determining the 
original nature and destination of the soul is to appeal 
to man's primary consciousness, — to that consciousness 
which is remote from whatever is merely individual, local, 
or national, but which underlies all human thinking and 
feeling. 

The analysis of that consciousness gives us the sense of 
absolute dependence. Here the law of necessity finds 

xm 



Xrv EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 

expression. This feeling rises with the dawn of our con- 
scious life, and grows with our growth. We know that 
none of the life-forces which make up our being have theii 
source in ourselves. We learn^ too. that their home is 
beyond our reach and our control. This consciousness of 
absolute dependence finds expression in the poetry and in 
the philosophy of every people, as truly as in the more 
common utterances of prayer and of praise. Some form 
of worship is natural to man. 

In this analysis we find, also, the feeling of supreme 
obligation. Here the law of liberty is revealed in our na- 
ture. This feeling carries with it an authority independent 
of all human legislation. It transcends in its imperatives 
the demands of passion or of interest. It can neither be 
annulled nor outgrown. No education, domestic or scho- 
lastic, can efface the idea of the right. All simple axio- 
matic principles of rectitude are intuitively recognized by 
all men, however they may differ when they come to ap 
ply them. 

Again : our primary consciousness reveals to us anothei 
element ; namely, a love for the good. Its lowest ex- 
pression is found in our instinctive desire for happiness ; 
and its highest manifestation is given in the spiritual long- 
ings and aspirations of the soul. Limited and defeated 
liore, we are ever turning, in our best moods, to an invisi- 
ble world, where we hope to realize the ideal of a perfect 
human life ; where fellowship with the transient and the 
partial shall give place to a union with the source and 
ground of all that is true and good. 

We need not carry the analysis further. These facts 
of our common consciousness have a profoundly religious 
significance. The first points to ajfower above us, abso- 



INTRODUCTION. XV 

lute and complete. The second indicates an authority 
over los, supreme and perfect. The third points to a goal 
he/ore us, final and ultimate. Now the power on which 
we depend, and the authoHtj to which we owe allegiance, 
and the goal for which we strive, can find their synthesis 
onlj in a living personal God. 

All this is apparent from the fact that these springs of 
action are the great regnant principles of our lives. Thej 
must then have corresponding realities out of and above 
ourselves, else the root of our nature is a lie. And, as 
the J centre in a self-conscious soul, so the verities which 
the J indicate must centre in a self-conscious God. Were 
this not the case, there would be disharmony within us 
and discord without us. Thus, a profound psychology 
must involve a true theology. The consciousness of a 
finite selfhood must find its counterpart and so its meaning 
in the consciousness of an infinite selfhood. The soul is 
the enigma and God is the solution. 

This general view is confirmed when we look at thf 
representative men of the race : for the men who have 
varied least from the idea and the law of their species 
best reveal human nature. We are not to go to the fore 
most men of any special class, — to scholars, poets, oi 
philosophers, — to learn what that nature is, but to the 
great chiefs of humanity. These best embody the ideal 
of a truly human character and a truly human life. Now 
it will be found that manhood has not suffered by faith in 
a personal God. The more truly religious a man is, the 
loftier is his general character and the more perfect is his 
humanity. We need here only allude to the Child of the 
race, whom the doubter and the believer alike admit to 
have been the noblest and purest of all that have ever trod 



XVI EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

the earth. Now, he was not the head of a class, for 
character is before genius and before learning ; nor was he 
the mere light of any age, or the mere leader of anj peo 
pie, but the Saviour and the Guide of the entire race. 
But this personage was the representative of humanity^ 
in that he was the most religious of mortals. 

Thus, whether we examine our common consciousness, 
or read the inner life of the noblest and best of our race, 
we come to the same conclusion, that man is a religious 
being. The model man is the truly religious man. The 
view here presented has not the suspicion of novelty. 
Cicero, in his work, '' De Natura Deorum," says that the 
idea of divinity is innate. ^' Omnibus enim innatum est 
et in animo quasi insculptum, esse Deos." Descartes de- 
clared that the idea of God could not have been originated 
by ourselves, nor have come from without, and so must 
have been implanted in our natures by God himself 

This mode of statement is, in many respects, faulty 
and the doctrine of innate ideas is now exploded; but 
there underlies this view the undeniable truth that man, 
by virtue of his innate susceptibility and inborn spiritual 
tendencies, does instinctively turn toward God. 

The question then presents itself, is man's nature met 
and satisfied, or have we a worshipper without a sanctuary 
and without a God ? Can this self-conscious and self- 
determining mind find its own infinite counterpart? Is 
its cry in the solitude of eternity answered only by a vain 
and empty echo ? Must man be thus left forever incom- 
plete ? It cannot be so. Starting, then, with this assur- 
ance, we are prepared to examine the usually received 
pi oofs cf the divine existence. 

The Historical Proof. — The belief in a sup-^rhuman 



INTRODUCTION. XVII 

intelligence is held by all nations. Its universality can 
be accounted for most easily on the supposition that such 
a being does in fact exist. But, as there have been very 
general beliefs without any foundation at all, the real 
value of this proof must rest on the view we have taken 
of man as a religious being. His character will then ex- 
plain and justify his creed. This common belief was 
noticed by the ancients. Cicero, who compiled largely 
from the Greek philosophers, and so represented the cur- 
rent opinions among the learned of his times, says, in the 
vork above alluded to: " Non institute aliquo aut more, 
iut lege sit opinio constituto maneat que, ad unum omnium 
firma consentio . . . Esse Decs." This view of the Ro- 
man orator and philosopher is now generally accepted. 

It has been objected, however, that travellers have found 
bribes without any idea of God whatever. But such sup- 
posed cases have been very rare. The idea of some super- 
human authority has maintained itself in the midst of 
great degradation and barbarism. The exceptional cases 
rest on doubtful testimony. If there are such, they are 
found where the moral and social nature has so suffered 
that an abnormal development has followed. Such tribes 
have no government and no institutions. They herd to- 
gether and live together like the brutes. Their rational 
and moral perceptions have experienced a partial obscura- 
tion, — for a time even a total eclipse. As the Great 
Teacher declared, '' If the light within thee be darkness, 
how great is that darkness." We are to remember that 
the instincts of rational creatures are subject to greater 
variations than the instincts of the brutes : in short, that 
they are more or less under the law of moral develop' 
ment. 



XVin EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

But how, it may be asked, shall we account for the 
Pantheistic and Polytheistic ideas which prevail so widelj? 
in the Eastern world ? We have classed them together, 
because thej are logically and historically connected. 
Both spring from one and the same root, namely, the es- 
trangement of man from a personal communion with his 
Maker and ihe substitution of nature in his place. With 
the one, the life of the universe is the life of God. All 
living forms are only the transient waves of the infinite 
sea of existence. The Pantheist has lost all sense of God 
as a living person, and substituted instead his conception 
of nature as a whole, and deified his own abstraction. 
He has exchanged the unity of life for the unity of death. 
He has made an idol of his own generalization. 

But, with the Polytheist, the various forces and agencies 
of the universe are so many veritable deities. In the 
place of one personal God, he puts the symbols of the 
philosophers and the personifications of the poets, or those 
agencies of nature which throng and press him on every 
side. The one divine light is thus broken into many 
colors by the media of his own selfish hopes and slavish 
fears. He, too, must have his idols ; but they must be 
brought down to the low level of his thoughts. The Pan- 
theist sinks the living God in the idea of an unknown, 
impersonal force, infinite and eternal ; while tlie Poly- 
theist divides the infinitude of God, and loses his personal 
unity in the very modes of the divine activity. There is, 
then, no real difficulty in these diverse but related types 
of thinking. As we have said, we have here an instance 
of the fact that man's moral judgments are not as fixed or 
as unerring as the instincts of the brutes. Though they 
can never be made to affirm that there is no God, yet they 



INTRODUCTION. XtX 

may greatly misapprehend his character and his relation 
to tJie universe. The difference, then, between the Poly- 
tlieist and the Pantheist is simply that of culture. The 
Brahman priest is a Pantheist, while the ignorant devotee 
is a Polytheist. 

Besides, there is no evidence that the race emerged 
from Polytheism into the Monotheistic faith. Miiller, in 
his work on the Vedic Literature, says : " There is a 
Monotheism that precedes the Polytheism of the Veda; 
and even in the invocation of their innumerable gods, the 
remembrance of a God, one and infinite, breaks through 
the mists of an idolatrous phraseology, like the blue sky 
that is hidden by passing clouds." So, also, Creuzer, in 
his great work on symbolism and mythology. 

The Outological Proof. — This has always been a 
favorite argument with speculative thinkers. Anselm was* 
the first who gave it a formal statement. We give hi? 
own words: God is " aliquid quo nihil majus cogitari 
potest. Id quo majus cogitari nequit, non potest esse ir 
intellectu solo. Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid, quo 
majus cogitari non valet, in intellectu et in re."' 

We may render this argument into the following syllo- 
gism. Our idea of the most perfect being is our idea 
of God. Necessary existence is an element in our idea 
of absolute perfection. Therefore God necessarily exists. 
But the conclusion is not warranted by the premises. 
The only logical conclusion is this : therefore necessary 
existence is an essential element in our idea of God. We 
are still in the ideal world. We have only gained this 
lofty conceijtlon of the Deity, namely, that it belongs to 
the very nature of God to be, and not to become. We can 
only conclude that if God does exist, he exists in his cvfr] 



XX EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

right and by virtue of his own nature. We are prepared 
to accept Jehovah's designation of himself, "I am that 
I am," as the profoundest which has ever been given. But 
we cannot infer from the bare conception of such a Being 
— though the conception may be complete — his objective 
existence. If the idea of a perfect Being were as necessary 
to our minds as the notion of self-existence is necessary to 
the idea of perfection, then Anselm's argument would be 
irresistible. But only that subjective thought or appre- 
hension whose denial in the light of experience is incon- 
seivable carries with it the pledge of the objective reality 
3f its contents. An ideal conception, which we are free 
to form or not, however lofty it may be, can only give us 
ideal perfection. 

The idea of the infinite is, however, a necessity of hu- 
man thought. The sense of the infinite rises in strength 
and clearness with the growth of the soul. It is, however, 
rather a feeling than a complete intellectual perception. 

It accompanies every notion of the finite. We may 
gather the field of consciousness and bind the harvest in 
logical bundles ; but yet there will be gleanings on that 
field richer than all our harvestings. Thus, the feeling 
of the infinite recurring so often and along so many dif- 
ferent lines of thought is, however vague it may be, one 
of the roots of our idea of God. It compels us to ascribe 
the attribute of infinitude to the Being whom our nature 
demands, and whom the universe reveals. 

The objection does not avail that the idea is purely 
negative. This does not accord with our consciousness. 
The soul, in expressing its belief in the infinite, makes 
its broadest affirmation. It does not simply deny all lim- 
itations, but affirms the unlimited ground of all that is 



INTRODUCTION. XXI 

limited. The word infinite is not, in our Tocabulary, a 
synonym for the non-existence of the finite. We have 
preferred to use the word "sense" rather than the term 
*''idea" in this connection. For the feeling of the pres- 
eace of that which is infinite, rather than any definite 
conception, seems to belong to all our highest modes of 
thought. 

This proof, then, stripped of all its defects in statement, 
is of great value. It completes all the others. It neces- 
sitates and so justifies us in taking the last step from the 
finite to the infinite. It points to a goal to be reached in 
all our argumentation on the divine existence, and helps 
us to reach that goal. It shows how the mind naturally 
and necessarily carries the idea of a God beyond the con- 
clusions of the logical understanding. 

If the last step in any syllogism gives us a cosmicai 
cause, or an architect of the known universe, we are war 
ranted by the very highest law of our thinking to affirn. 
that that cause or that architect is infinite. This proof 
might have been termed the ideological, while the propei 
ontological proof would seem to require us to start witb 
the fact of an existence, limited and phenomenal, and thei 
infer existence which is infinite and absolute. 

Such in fact was the argument of Dr. Samuel Clark. 
This proof has been termed the a priori argument. For 
though God is not an effect, yet the evidence of his exist- 
ence may be the result of certain innate, rational tenden- 
cies. 

This leads us to 

The Cosmological Proof. — 'V\ e have a series of finite 
and dependent objects, of secondary causes and effects. 
These can only be accounted for on the supposition of a 



XXII EVIDENCES OF CnHISTIAXJTT. 

first cause — causa causarum. We are necessitated by a 
law of our nature to ask whence comes this changinnj and 
circling movement, and what is its gathering and govern- 
ing centre. Must not all these forces turn 

" Through darkness up to God " ? 

Waiving for the present the fact that geology seems to 
indicate many specific creations (see chap. ii. sec. 2), 
and so to preclude the idea of a simple evolution of an in- 
finite series of dependent agencies, let us examine the 7iz/- 
pothesis. The links in the chain of dependencies may be 
made on a colossal scale, and a grand phenomenal process 
may be conceived to go on somewhat after the following 
manner. Great cycles of creation will succeed each other. 
Each will begin with the elemental forces — primary 
molecules with their energies — forming in their combi- 
nation and confluence a moving nebulous mass. This 
mass of nebulous matter will by its rotation become a sun 
to the bodies which it throws off from its surface. A 
solar system is thus formed, balanced by countless sys- 
tems of a like kind, filling illimitable space and mov- 
ing through great tracts of time. Each one of these 
myriad groups of worlds will in the course of ages reach 
its meridian of perfection, with all its forms of beauty and 
life, and then return, at the completion of its cycle, to its 
original nebulous condition. From out this state a new 
movement will commence, and advance by a like process to 
a like goal, and so on forever. What is true of one sys- 
tem will be true of all. But such a number of dependent 
series of worlds going on infinitely is simply impossible 
without a creating and moving cause. The beginning of 
each system, and the balancing of their innumerable cen- 



INTRODUCTION, XXIIi 

trea as thej all sweep through space, point to a supra- 
cosmical origin. An eternal Creator best satisfies the 
' demands of our thinking. His continued presence must 
underlie all the continued changes of the universe. That 
wliich absolutely depends on God for its origination must 
ultimately depend on him for its continuance. It is 
^vithin the sphere of the possible that these several series 
alluded to in the above hypothesis may have some un- 
known physical centre, though it transcends our imagina- 
tion to conceive of any such centre. Nor do the facts in 
\he case warrant any such notion; nor, if they did, would 
vbat hypothesis aid us in the solution of our problem. 

Besides, we cannot admit that a chain of causes and 
effects may be eternal though every link is finite and depend- 
jnt. It is true we can as easily believe in an absolute 
3ndlessness in one direction as in another. We can as 
readily accept a timeless regress without an efficient cause, 
as a timeless progress without a final cause ; for in truth 
we cannot accept either. The endlessness in one direction, 
as in the other, is purely relative in its character. The 
whole series is of a parenthesis connecting the first cause 
with the final cause and identifying the two, and is in the 
most absolute sense dependent throughout on the continued 
presence of a creative power. Besides, when we affirm the 
endless continuance of any one form of life, as, for example, 
of the human soul, we have only a relative term of departure. 
The link with which we start is itself absolutely dependent. 
We have not laid hold of even one end of the chain. We 
conclude, then, that an absolutely infinite series of finite 
and dependent forces and agencies is a simple absurdity. 
If it be objected that matter is eternal, and that the 
entire series of worlds is only the result of the interaction 



XXIV EVIDENCES OF CnTiTSTIANJTY. 

of its inherent forces ; we reply that matter, so far as 
we know or can know it, is dependent throughout ; foi 
we only know it as it addresses the senses or acts on our 
organism, or can be made the subject of experiments. If 
we analyze any form of it we never find a forceless entity, 
but a change-seeking and change-producing element. It 
is something to be accounted for. It is true, thus far we 
have not been able to reduce the elements to anything 
more simple ; but these very elements are composites of 
forces, — minute summaries of attracting and repelling 
powers. And wherever we meet with matter, it presents 
itself as a combination of afiinities and activities, and so 
as something demanding explanation. If there is any- 
thing else in matter, it is utterly unknown to us, and must 
be left out of the account both of the believer and of the 
doubter. If it be said that matter is a substance without 
properties, and so need not be accounted for ; we answer, 
then it will account for nothing, and must stand at the 
opposite pole of self-existence and be represented by zero, 
and so proclaim its absolute dependence. 

We shall have occasion subsequently to treat of the 
theory of development here suggested. 

It is added, however, that such a Being is as inconceiv- 
able as an uncaused and eternal universe. It is true they are 
both beyond our power of conception. But the reason for 
the inconceivablenessof the oneis the impotence of the human 
intellect, while the reason for the inconceivableness of the 
other is its repugnance to the human mind ; the one is above 
our capacity of comprehension, while the other is contrary to 
our reason. We bow our souls before the transcendence of 
the one, and repudiate the absurdity of the other. We can- 
not rompass the idea of an eternal God, and we cannot rid 



INTRODUCTION. 3CXT 

ourselves of it if we believe in God at all. But the measure 
of our coDiprehension is neither the measure of existence 
nor the limit of our faith. We are often compelled by the 
constitution of our souls to believe what we cannot image 
forth in our imagination, or construe to our logical under- 
btanding; for faitl is in its nature receptive, and not 
constructive. 

But after all, it is still affirmed that the universe is 
simply under the reign of law. This mode of speaking 
is vao;ue and ambioruous. The literal meaninoj of the term 
law is a command with sanctions. It is the expression of 
sovereignty. It has here a metaphorical or figurative sig- 
nification. It means the action of forces. Now these are 
only the administrators of the supreme will, and derive all 
their efficiency from the constant presence of that will. 
Their mode of acting, then, is but the operation of that 
sovereign will, and the constancy of that action is only an 
evidence of the immutability of that will, and of the per- 
fection of its government. It is this permanency in the 
forces of nature — this immutability in the will of the 
supreme Author — which makes civilization possible. Tc 
say that the universe is under the reign of law is only say ■ 
ing that it is under the reign of a supreme Lawgiver. 

Finally, it is objected that this proof does not lead us 
to a personal God. We answer, it must not be taken 
alone, for it rests for its support on the preceding argu- 
ment, and is to be interpreted in the light of our essential 
spiritual cravings and of our abiding practical necessities. 

Tlie Teleological Proof. — This has attracted the 
greatest attention. The literature of our language is ex- 
ceedingly rich in works treating of this branch of our 
subject. The argument is, in truth, exhaustless. It is 



XXVI EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

important that we fall into no mere plaj on words in oui 
statement. Such is the case when we affirm that the 
world bears marks of design, and therefore must have had 
a designer. Here design means a designing mind ; and sc 
we reason in a circle. Besides, we assume a unity of 
purpose, and so beg the conclusion that there is only one 
intelligent Architect of the universe. 

Care, too, must bs taken not to limit to any one sphere 
the marks of intelligence. These relate to order, to 
beauty, and to utility. 

Order pervades nature. The elements crystallize ac- 
- cording to fixed geometrical forms, and combine in definite 
numerical proportions. All forms in the plant kingdom 
are built up after the idea of the class to which they be- 
long. Every individual organic structure follows the law 
of its kind. Variations are only temporary, and touch 
mly what is accidental, and merely adjust the creature to 
its new surroundings. In the animal kingdom, unity of 
plan is never sacrificed. Thus, when an organ ceases to 
be of use, its rudiments are still retained, to indicate the 
type to which the animal belongs. The structural pattern, 
in its chief outlines, is preserved in all the great branches 
of animal life, in order to show how species are related to 
each other. Thus, the bones of the hand, of the paw, of 
the fiuj are similar in structure. These homologues in- 
dicate that the several species to which they belong were 
formed according to one generic plan Here, too, varia- 
liuns are only temporary, and answer special purposes. 
The great divisions in the animal economy make up th^e 
entire system of animal life, and mark the generically 
distinct and ascending paths in the creative movement. 
All this indicates thought of the greatest breadth and 



llfTRODUCTION, XXVIJ 

farthest reach. The intelligence here revealed is the in- 
tellio-ence of the scientist ; for order is at the basis of all 
science. 

Beauty, too, is an end in nature. Its presence is all- 
pervading. In the shells of the ocean ; in the precious 
stones and metals hidden in the mountains ; in the color 
and contour of leaf, and of flower, and of fruit ; and in 
the statuesque form of the living stalk that supports them 
all : in the gorgeous plumage and in the graceful evolu- 
tions of many kinds of birds ; in the symmetry of animals, 
and in the spiritual features of the human face ; — in all 
these we see the evidence of the beautiful. Here, then, 
beyond question, we have the intelligence of the artist. 

Utility is admitted to be an end, and perhaps the chief 
end in creation. We see it in the countless numbers of 
special adaptations which front us on every side. Some of 
these will be presently noticed. But just here it only 
concerns us to mark an additional evidence of intelligence, 
— the intelligence of the mechanician. 

These three ends generally blend together ; for model, 
and symmetry, and contrivance are found in the same 
structure. Yet any one of these may be dominant, though 
hardly exclusive, as in the crystal, — where order and 
beauty seem to take precedence of utility, — or as in an- 
imals of the primeval world, where beauty gives place 
to the law of adaptation : yet even here there is an ele- 
ment of the beautiful in the perfect adjustment of life to 
its external conditions. 

We wish to show that the adaptations of nature are all 
adjusted to each other, and that all point towards a unity 
of design. 

The elements of nature enter into the framework of 



XXVIII EVIVKNCUH OF cnniRTlANITY. 

every living structure. In their mechanical comhinationa 
they are the conditions of all life, vegetable as well as 
animal. You cannot increase the oxygen of the air with- 
out inviting a universal conflagration, nor can you dimin- 
ish it without bringing on a general stagnation. And in 
their chemical unions they form solids,, or fluids, or gases, 
and thus make the difierent types of life possible. 

The inorganic world is the direct support of the plant 
kingdom. The vegetable lives on the elements which 
play about its leaves or gather at its roots. They are the 
materials by which the germ principle builds up its or- 
ganism, and shapes its stalk, and determines the angle of 
its branches, and the outline of its leaf, and the color and 
flavor of its fruit. Here the two worlds minister to each 
other. The plant gives back at its death what it has re- 
ceived during its life. In fact, the soil itself advances in 
fertility as it becomes the residuum of organic forms. 
Nature feeds on her decay. 

Again : following the ascending stream of life, we find 
that the animal lives on organic matter alone, though the 
elements are, as we have said, the condition of all life. 
The two kingdoms of nature support each other. Thus, 
while the animal takes the oxygen from the atmosphere, 
and gives back the carbonic acid, this in turn becomes the 
chief food of plants. It is consumed, and decomposed, 
and the oxygen returned to the atmosphere for the animal. 
By this mutual respiration, in part, at least, the balance 
of the elements in the air, so necessary to all the higher 
forms of life, is maintained. The microscopic animals of 
the earth, air, and water, are the invisible scavengers of 
nature, whose office seems to be to devour those decaying 
organisms which might breed pestilence and death. They 



INTRODUCTION. XXIX 



thus prevent particles of matter from passing into element- 
ary gases, and, by a living appropriation, start them again 
on the upward current of life. 

All these departments of nature have paved the way 
through a series of vast geologic periods for the reign of 
man. The earth slowly formed its solid crust, and the 
great forests of the ancient world gathered the noxious 
gases from the atmosphere, and prepared it for animal 
life, and then sank beneath the surface, thus reserving 
their treasures for human wants. During this great 
transition epoch, animals must gradually appear, else the 
atmosphere would lose its balance ; and they must be 
adapted to their conditions, and must finally give place 
to others more useful to man. The coral insects must 
build up the islands of the sea, and lay the foundation of 
continents, and protect their shores by solid ramparts. 
The secret forces of nature must work in her laboratory, 
and prepare for human needs all the precious and all thfv 
useful metals. The internal agencies must lift up the beds 
of the ocean, and bring to the light of day its accumu- 
lated treasures. They must, too, heave up the mountain 
ranges, and open the w^ell-springs, and form the various 
systems of rivers which now water the earth. These and 
other forces must vary the surface of the continents, and 
create natural harbors along their shores. Unless in all 
these, and a thousand other ways, preparations had been 
made for man, he could not have fulfilled his destiny, and 
there would have been a fatal break in the higher adjust- 
ments of nature. All this points to a unity of design. 

But the earth, the abode of man, does not move in 

space apart from the solar system : nor is the solar isolated 

from the astral systems, or from similar groups of worlds 
3* 



XXX EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT, 

which make up the great Cosmos. The design here indi- 
cated must be connected with other purposes unknown to 
us, but possibly revealed to other orders of beings ; j«nd 
all these relative intentioi is must issue in one ultimate and 
absolute end. That end — • that final cause — can only 
be commensurate with the first cause ; in fact, identical 
with it. This is favored by the grand conclusion towards 
which all science tends, namely, the doctrine of cosmical 
unity. Thus, the great Architect will exhibit his own 
ideals, will realize his own thoughts, and will make mani- 
fest the perfections of his own character. 

It is objected that we cannot infer an infinite designer 
from a finite system of contrivances. We reply, that when 
we have reached one designing mind, adequate to the known 
universe, we naturally conclude that that mind is infinite. 
This proof is bound up with the ontological and the cos- 
mological argument. s 

The same objection is repeated in another form. It is 
said that the designer shows marks of design, and so needs 
to be accounted for. But this is mere play at words. 
When we have reached the Architect of the universe we car. 
go no higher. We ascribe at once to him the incommuni- 
cable attribute of self-existence. The mind rests here. The 
legitimacy of the idea of the infinite makes this process 
legitimate also. The mind is not driven along an endless 
series, in the hopeless search for the absolute, but is led 
by a law of its nature to ascribe infinitude to the Architect 
of the universe. 

It is also objected that this proof leads us only to an Archi- 
tect, and not to a Creator. But we have already shown 
the legitimacy of the idea of the absolute, and we have also 
shown that matter always presents itself to us as something 



INTnODUCTlOK. XXZl 

that needs to be accounted for. We conclude, then, the 

Architect can only be the proper Creator himself. 

But it is intimated that these very contrivances result 
from forces adjusting themselves to each other. In this 
way the light acts on the eye, and the air on the lungs, and 
the water on the gills. But the power to modify any ex- 
isting forms is wholly separate and distinct from the power 
to originate them . The power to affect externally a plant 
or an animal is certainly something different from the power 
to create a plant or an animal. The fact that a creature 
can adapt itself to new conditions is only another instance 
of the wisdom of its Maker. The variations, however, even 
here, have their limits. One species does not piss into 
another ; at least one great branch of the animal kingdom 
does not pass over into another and different branch. 
Besides, what shall we say when we find that the flower and 
the insect seem to be made for each other ? Any process 
of essential mutual adjustment would seem to be fatal to the 
life of both. The question would return, how did flower and 
insect first come into life ? There is no evidence that the 
elements can create life, and, even if they could, it would 
not eliminate the idea of a Creator. Spontaneous gener- 
ation, even if it were true, could only be a creational law, 
— simply a mode in which God creates the lowest form of 
organic life. 

Moral Proof. — This has been ably elaborated by the 
German philosopher, Kant. As presented by him, it is, in 
brief, the following : We are made for the highest virtue, 
and the highest happiness. Both are desirable, and both at- 
tainable. Both must lead to one common goal. That goal 
can be reached only in another life, and in fellowship with 
God, 



XXXII EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

This argument has in part been anticipated by our 
view of man as a religious being. It rests on the great 
facts of human life and human history. These reveal a 
moral government, established, though not perfected. To 
state the case more specifically, the evidences of a divine 
government are found : — 

First. In the fact of a moral nature. We are endowed 
with a moral sense, and recognize a moral law, and 
apprehend ultimate moral principles, and so must cognize 
a moral Lawgiver. 

Second. In the actual rewards of virtuous living, and 
in the actual penalties of a vicious life. These are felt and 
seen in our self-approbation on the one hand, and self- 
condemnation on the other. We thus recognize ourselves 
as the subjects of God's government. 

It is further made known in the social advantages of 
virtue, and disadvantages of vice. The results of virtuous 
acts often seem to be counterbalanced by others of greater 
pretensions and show; but these are always of a lowei 
grade, and of temporary worth. Virtue may even bring 
along with it special trials,, and vice carry along with it 
special attractions for a season ; but it will be found that 
virtue in the end, and on the whole, will ever secure the 
richer blessings of life. 

Third. In the fact that human government must pun- 
ish crime as injurious to society, in order to maintain its 
existence. This procedure is essential to its stability. 
The government may make a mistake in deciding what is 
criminal, but it cannot ignore its own idea of virtue as a 
confiervative force in society. Let the distinction between 
rirtue and vice be given up, and no political machinery, or 
mere physical force, can save the commonwealth from de- 



INTRODUCTION. XXXIIl 

struction. Thus, every human government rests on and tes- 
tifies to the invisible moral government of God. 

Fourth. In the providential history of the world. The 
history of humanity has not yet reached its goal, and just to 
this extent this proof must be incomplete. But there are 
clear traces of a divine movement in the lives of individuals 
and of nations. We find a Providence in the general prog- 
ress of humanity, in the mission of nations, and even in the 
great wars which have afflicted our race. 

Fifth. In the tendencies of virtue and of vice to secure 
their respective ends — that of reward or of punishment. 
The hindrances and delays to these results are artificial, and 
so temporary, while the tendencies to them are natural, 
and so sure to prevail in the final issue. The expectation 
of such a perfect moral government is, then, warranted by 
the course of Divine Providence. — See "Immortality 
OF THE Soul." 

Each of these proofs of the existence of God, taken b^ 
itself, is incomplete, because it is based on a partial view 
of the facts in the case. Each needs to be complemented 
by the others. They form together one complete^ and, we 
think, convincing process of argumentation. If we break 
the demonstration, we have at best only great fragments, 
inviting our criticism, and awakening our doubts by their 
very inadequacy. But when these proofs are all taken 
together, and are interpreted by the religious wants and 
aspirations of the human soul, they cannot but carry to 
every open mind the convictWn of the existence of a liv- 
ing and personal God. 



XXKIV EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 



IL THE IMMOBTAIITY OF THE SOUL 

If God is personal, the soul is immortal. These two 
truths mutually support each other. If God is distinct 
from the cosmos, the soul is distinct from any physical or- 
ganism. If the soul is destined to a spiritual and eternal 
world, then that world is constituted by the very presence 
of God himself If there is no personal God, then there 
is no place for the continued individual life of the soul 
after death. A full belief in either of these truths in- 
;:Jures a complete conviction of the other. 

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul may be 
more distinctly grounded on the following considerations. 

First. On the Expectation of a Future Life. This is 
round everywhere. It has embedded itself in the mythol- 
ogies of the old world, and wrought itself into the super- 
stitions of ancient and of modern times. It emerges in 
the oriental dogma of transmigration of souls, and it 
comes before us as an integral part of the old Platonic 
philosophy. It is now the inheritance of the ages, and 
the full or partial possession of every earnest soul through- 
out Christendom. 

This expectation, amounting often to a full credence, 
varies with the elevation and tone of one's life. The 
higher this life is, the stronger is our conscious hold on 
the life to come, for the belief has its roots in our spiritual 
nature, and not in the intellect alone, or the aesthetic sen- 
timents merely. Thus a man may possess great culture, 
and may be wanting in depth of moral feeling, and so may 
lose all faith in immortality. Such was the case with 
Julius Caesar, and many other enlightened heathen, before 



INTRODUCTION. XXXV 

and since his day. A man maj give a false direction to 
the dominant thought of his mind, and, holding to the im- 
personality of God, he must make his future life equally 
unconscious. In all such cases the distinctive religious 
and moral elements in man's nature have been greatly 
weakened. The general truth of this view is exhibited on 
a broad scale in the ancient faiths of Egypt and China. 
The Egyptians, with a moral consciousness more or less 
alive, notwithstanding the grossness of their cultus, and 
retaining somewhat of the primeval revelation, held more 
clearly than any other great heathen community to the 
doctrine of a future life. The Chinese, on the other hand, 
with his moral sense obscured by a materialistic civiliza- 
tion, and with hardly any of the traditions of an earlier 
and more spiritual faith, had the faintest apprehensions of 
a conscious existence in another world. 

The belief, then, in an existence beyond the grave is 
natural. It does not spring from any fear of death, or 
any mere animal love of life, nor is it one of the fruits of 
superstition. These doubtless color it, and distort its nor- 
mal expression, but they do not create it. Such a faith 
best harmonizes with all human capacities, and best helps 
on to all that is purest and loftiest in human action. 
Without it the highest heroism is impossible. No man can 
be warranted in making an absolute end of himself for 
any cause whatever. For while it is true our duty must 
rest on our relation to God, it is yet the relation of a soul, 
godlike in its character, and so endless in its life. With- 
out this belief, martyrdom would be supreme folly. 

If, then, this belief be general, and be the mark of 
true manhood, it must be natural and so legitimate. 

Second. On the Nature of the Soul. We cannot go 



XXX VI EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

beneath consciousness, and aflBrm the unity of the soure 
essence. All we know is that the person is one and in- 
divisible. Consciousness, if it exists at all, must exist as 
a unit. Our selfhood cannot be broken into a number of 
self-conscious and self-determining fragments. The assumed 
simplicity of the Soul's essence seems inconsistent with the 
notion of a seminal and potential existence in the head of the 
race. Besides, if it proves anything, it proves too much. 
For absolute unity of substance seems to prove the pre-exist- 
ence of the soul, as well as its continued life. If death 
cannot destroy it, how can birth originate it? On this 
supposition the doctrine of metempsychosis is not unnatural. 
It is enough for our purposes to accept this unity of con- 
sciousness. The soul emerges by the very law of its being 
in a free, conscious personality. Here, as we shall see, is 
the pledge of its immortality. This conscious unity cer- 
tainly accords with unity of composition, though it does not 
demonstrate a simplicity of nature, and so a perpetuity of 
being. 

But mind exhibits qualities very different from any form 
of matter whatever, especially from that with which it is 
most closely connected. The soul, then, may have a des- 
tiny very different from that of the body. Thus, mind 
cannot be measured, or weighed, or put to any sensible 
test. Its manifestations have neither extension, nor form, 
nor motion, nor any physical relation whatever : yet they 
are realities of the highest grade and of the highest worth. 
The soul, then, may not share in the fortunes of its present 
organism. For it does not seem to be identical with it. 
It may, under different conditions, form another organism 
quite different from the one which it now inhabits. It may 
be under the necessity of using some medium of commu- 



INTRODUCTION, XXXVIl 

nicrtion with the universe, suited to its altered surroundings. 
Possibly the Supreme Being alone is without any organism 
whatever. All that we need here insist on is, that the 
qualities of mind are so different from those of matter, as 
to point to a different and higher destiny. 

The mind of the brute cannot be resolved into material 
elements. If its work is done and its growth finished 
here, it returns to the Supreme Will, by a process the re- 
verse of that by which it first issued from the Divine Voli- 
tion. The difference between the destiny of brute intel- 
ligence and that of the human soul is measured by the 
distance between the two spiritual natures; but neither 
follows in the wake of its physical organism. 

It cannot be maintained that the mind is the result of 
the organism, — a secretion, or function, or electric nerve- 
movement, of the brain. For how will you account for 
the organism itself? How was the machine made for the 
production of thought? May not organization be the 
result of life, instead of life being the result of organiza- 
tion ? Such is the view of Prof. Huxley, in his recent 
work on Comparative Anatomy. In his first lecture, on 
Classification, referring to the Rhizopodd, he says : ' ' Nor 
is there any group of the animal kingdom, which more 
admirably illustrates a very well-founded doctrine^ and 
one which was often advocated by Hunter himself, tliai 
life is tlie cause^ and not the consequence, of organiza- 
tion." 

But, waiving this point, a process so diverse and so 
complicated as human thinking would seem to require a 
corresponding qualitative difference in different portions 
of the brain. But no such difference appears. That 
portion which is in an especial sense the organ of thought 



XXXVIII EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lias a general uniform appearance. We have afferent and 
efferent nerves : we ought also to have, on this theorj, 
nerves of thought, — nerves whose function it is to think. 
Physiology has disclosed no such fact of science. 

Besides, what organization of matter can produce quali- 
ties so radically unlike material properties as thought, or 
feeling, or volition ? It is true, chemical combinations 
give us properties widely different from the qualities of 
the combining elements ; but they all belong to the same 
grade, — all are material properties. It is only a change 
in the forms of matter. Charcoal and diamond are made 
up of the same elements, but show different properties ; 
but even here everything is material. If mind was only 
the sublimate of matter, then volition might be the sub- 
limate of extension, and thought of color, affection of 
weight, etc. This seems hardly possible. But the hy- 
pothesis itself does not account for all the facts, — indeed, 
hardly pretends to account for them. What vibration of 
the brain can give us an abstract idea? How do the 
vibrations so differ as to furnish now the idea of the beau- 
tiful, and now the idea of the right ? What one gives us 
the idea of the absolute ? What electric movement is it 
that constitutes a volition ? and how does this tremor of 
the molecules of the brain start a whole series of vibra- 
tions, so that we have a connected process of reasoning ? 
But the difficulties increase as we press the hypothesis. 
At best, it can only suggest a possible origin for a chain 
of thoughts and feelings and volitions. But conscious- 
ness is a unity. How is this chain conscious of itself? 
The vibration gives a thought : but what gives the self in 
which the thought inheres? Hoav is our selfhood to be 
accounted for? What nerve-movement within the era- 



INTRODUCTION, XXXIX 

alum gives the I, — the thinker himself, — the one person 
who remains the same through his whole life, amid the 
thousand currents and eddies of his varied thinking and 
feeling ? Here, then, the materialistic supposition utterly 
breaks down. It cannot cross the chasm between the 
physical and the spiritual in man. 

The death, then, of the physical organism does not 
carry with it the death of the soul. It only disconnects 
it with this physical world. Its activity is no longer visi- 
lily present among us ; but this is no reason for conclud- 
ing that it has ceased to exist, or ceased to be active in 
jinother and higher sphere of life. It may take on a new 
organism from its very surroundings. The soul, then, is 
an immaterial personal energy. It seems to be destined 
to a spiritual and endless existence. 

It is said that the universal alone survives, while the 
special must perish. How much truth there may be in 
this vague speculative statement, we need not inquire ; but 
the consciousness that survives the issue of this life will 
be filled, and so formed, by an infinite Living Presence. 
The form will be individual, but its contents will be uni- 
versal. The soul will come face to face with its God, and 
will thus enter an eternal life. Then the consciousness 
of self will be pervaded and exalted to the consciousness 
of God. 

Third. On the Analogy of Nature. All creatures 
are suited to their conditions and relations in life. They 
all realize their destiny. We infer, then, that man, the 
crown and glory of creation, must reach his destination. 
The analogy cannot fail just where, most of all, we should 
expect it would hold good. But, in this world, man is 
above his conditions and relations, and so must be destined 



XL EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT, 

to transcend them all. He is superior to his physical 
state, and to his material connections. Thej are, indeed, 
the media of his acting in and on this world ; but thej 
are also hindrances to his acting in the world of spirits. 
He is now a tenant of both worlds, but his ultimate home 
must be the invisible world. Here his higher energies 
and susceptibilities are hampered and limited : in truth, 
some of them are in an embryonic state, and are awaiting 
the new birth into a higher sphere of living. 

Besides, man's life is too short for him to begin to 
accomplish all he was made to achieve. The period of 
his earthly life is straitened by the necessities of his bod- 
ily organism, — by its waste, by disease, and by death. 
The soul, as it advances, finds itself surrounded by the 
ruins of its broken resolves and half-finished projects. 
The history of humanity shows that there is no assignable 
limit to human growth. It thus needs not only a higher 
life, but an endless life. 

It is objected, however, that the species will be perfect- 
ed, though the individuals perish. It is said that man 
secures his immortality in the perpetuation and advance- 
ment of his race. In confirmation of this view, and iir 
answer to the above argument, much is made of the fact 
that there are thousands of plants and animals which do 
not reach the perfection indicated by their endowments, 
but die prematurely. They find their perfection, it is 
affirmed, in the kind or class to which they belong. We 
need not, in reply, press the startling fact that, even on 
this theory, countless thousands of both plants and ani- 
mals of various orders have been perfectly developed; 
while not a single solitary member of our race has ever 
reached, or made any noticeable progress towards reach- 



INTRODUCTION. XLl 

ing, in this life, the manifest goal of his existence. We 
may, too, pass bj another fact, namely, that the race, in 
its present abode, and left to its present condition, must 
find a limit to its progress ; and that limit must not be in 
its inherent energies, but in its outward means of expan- 
sion and elevation. It is only a question of time. AVhon 
the material? for man's civilization, gathered in the earth, 
begin sensibly to diminish, or begin to fail to meet the 
increasing demands of the race, then the advancing growth 
of humanity will be checked, and a period of general 
decline must follow. If there is no heaven for man, one 
thing is certain, — that this earth, in its present condition, 
can never be made by human instrumentality to answer as 
a substitute. How, then, can the individual reach his 
destiny in the race ? 

It is true, that plants and animals live for their kind. 
Thej are samples and specimens of the class to which they 
belong. Whatever be their endowments, they all lack the 
prerogative of a free personal life. Man stands apart and 
above them all. He is an original, — an individual, inde- 
pendent power, existing, not alone for the race, but as well 
for himself The animal has impulses, rather than voli- 
tions ; necessities, rather than responsibilities : liabilities, 
rather than duties; cravings, rather than aspirations: sense, 
perceptions and judgments, rather than rational thoughts and 
universal ideas. The one has his cries, and the other his 
articulate speech. The one is content to use the imple- 
ments of nature ; the other is master of nature herself 
Man alone makes his artificial instruments, and subordi- 
nates the forces of nature to his will. In fact, he must do 
4* 



XLII BVIDKNCES OF CHRXSTIANITT, 

SO in order to be what he was made to be, — a man Man, 
then, is more than an animal : he is a person, and a per- 
son endowed with an individual stamp of his own, having 
his own independent plan of life, and his own separate and 
untransferable duties, and his own distinct and individual 
destiny. Thus, one man cannot answer for another, as 
one animal may for another. Thus, he is not lost in the 
race, but exists in and for himself, and so must be viewed 
in his own uniq^ue greatness as an heir of immortality. 

This perfection is thus individual, and cannot conse- 
quently be found in the species. This individuality will 
maintain itself even in the perfection of its symmetry. 
Each will have, not a uniform stamp, but its own separate 
and distinct mould and make. Its symmetry is thus to 
be typical, and not generic and absolute. Every soul is 
to grow and to develop, according to the law and the idea 
of its own peculiar nature. 

If it be said that, after all, death does end man as well 
as every other animal ; we answer, our argument remains 
untouched. We must still insist that man is more 
than an animal. He is even structurally distinct from that 
class which seems nearest to him. For his forearms are 
not designed for locomotion, as in the case of the apes, 
but chiefly as instruments of mind. They are cephalic in 
their purpose. The foot, too, is for support merely, and 
the great toe has no proper prehensile power, as is the case 
with the gorilla. The instances alleged to the contrary show 
no structural conformity between the human foot and the 
hand of the ape. When Huxley, in his work on ^' Man's 
Place in Nature," calls the hand of the ape ''prehen- 
sile," he simply distinguishes, by this very term, the hand 
from the foot. So when he refers to a few instances 



INTRODUCTION. XLUl 

where the toe has done the work of the thumb, he does not 
at all lessen their structural difference. 

The Duke of Argyll, in an article published in the "Good 
Words," says : " Man's place in nature has long been, and 
still is, the grand battle-ground of anatomists and physiol- 
ogists. But Prof. Huxley confesses that, if in defining 
man we are to take into account the phenomena of mind, 
there is, between man and those beasts which stand nearest 
to him in anatomy, a difference so wide that it cannot be 
measured, ' an enormous gulf, a divergence immeasurable, 
xnd practically infinite.' But this last conclusion is 
really incompatible with the first. There is an inseparable 
connection between the phenomena of mind and the phe- 
nomena of organization. They must be taken together, 
And interpreted together. The structure of every creature 
is correlated with the functions which its several parts are 
fitted to discharge ; and the moral character, dispositions, 
and instincts of the creature are again strictly correlated 
with these functions. The mental difference between a 
gorilla and a man is the measure of value which nature 
has set upon the kind and degree of divergence which sep- 
arates these two material forms." 

Fourth. On the Imperfection of the present Moral 
Government of God. The evidence of such a govern- 
ment having been established in this world has already 
been given, and need not be here repeated. 

But it is equally clear that that government does not 
find its completion in this life. Now, if there is a God, 
and if he has established a moral government, he must be- 
yond all doubt complete it, and that completion can only 
be found in a future life. 

It seems needless to show that we have in this world 



XLXV EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT. 

only the beginning of such a government. Even Plutarch 
felt it, as is seen in his treatise on the delay of God in the 
punishment of the wicked. The Psalmist before him felt 
it, in his oft-repeated cry, ' ■ How long, Lord ? ' ' The 
fact of infidelity witnesses to this imperfection. Por it is 
essential to the perfection of government that it not only 
be perfect, but that it be seen to be so by every one, every- 
where, and always. The perfection embraces certainly as 
much as this. If men are rewarded and punished per- 
fectly without their knowing it, then the great govern- 
mental ends of such a procedure, the ends of public law, 
are utterly overlooked. Besides, rewards and punishments 
that do not enter the consciousness are simply so many for- 
tunes and misfortunes without any moral sanction what- 
ever. Thus, then, we clearly discern the imperfection of 
God's present administration of affairs ; and in that great 
fact we have an assurance not only of a future life, but of 
a future life of retribution. 

But if it be said that all this proof has been found in- 
adequate thoroughly to convince men of the reality of a 
future life, this shows how deeply man needs the super- 
natural. Christianity must do for him what natural reli- 
gion, in the nature of the case, cannot do. It must not 
argue the question of immortality, but give the fact of im- 
mortality in the case of some one transcendent individual 
who should fairly represent the race. (See chap, ii., 
sec. 3.) 

It is not intended to deny the soul's absolute dependence 
on God. Its immortality is relative. God alone hath im- 
mortality absolutely. Man's future existence is the gift of 
God, but an original and permanent gift, and so an endow- 
ment. Take it away, and an endless growth ceases to be the 



INTRODUCTION, XLV 

law of our lives ; and with this change would come the loss 
of our free moral and rational capacities; for only where 
there is endless progress can there be moral freedom. We 
should no longer grope after the unknown. The prophetic 
elements of our nature would be blotted out. Immortality, 
then, is not simply something superadded to the soul, but 
its inalienable possession and inheritance. 



EVIDENCES OF CHRISllANITY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HISTORICAL CHABACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

SECTION FIRST, 
THE DTTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

The records of the Christian faith bear the marks of 
being the genuine product of apostolic times. The verj 
idiom in which they are composed is an evidence of this 
fact. It was formed bv the blending of the Greek, th< 
Hebrew, and the Christi m elements into one living speech 

Now, the origin and character of the language fastens i\ 
to the first century of the Christian era. The Greek 
tongue had been widely diffused by the conquests of 
Alexander, and had become corrupted in that diffusion, and 
corrupted most of all in the city he founded. This com- 
mon dialect was accepted by the Jews of the dispersion, 
and, at a later period, by their countrymen of Palestine. 
How it was adapted to their purposes is seen in the Sep- 
tuagint version of their sacred books. The language thus 
formed lacked the symmetry of the Greek period, but 
gained in that vividness of conception peculiar to the 
Hebrew mode of thought. The subtle interdependence of 
clauses gave way to the more simple Jewish parallelism. 
But this spefcli underwent still another change. The Jew, 



48 EVIDENCES OF CnRlSTIANJTY, 

in his conversion, was lifted up into a new field of thought, 
and was forced to put a new and profound meaning into all 
his old religious words and phrases. Thus the spirit of the 
new faith and the distinctive ideas of the new religion en- 
tered, with all their depth and breadth of significance, into 
tne Greek forms, and the Hebrew modes of conception. 

Now, the absence of the artistic spirit, or of the philo- 
sophical tendency, as well as the frequent quotations from 
the Hebrew original, show that the writings of the New 
Testament must have been written, not only in the first 
century, but under Palestinian influence. They could 
not have been composed at Alexandria. They must have 
been written while the Hebrew still retained something 
of the freshness of a living tongue. Now, a language is 
beyond the reach of imposture ; for it is not the inspiration 
of the hour, but the growth of ages. It is not the creation 
of any individual genius, but the fullest expression of a 
nation's culture. 

Besides, these writings, from their very character, 
must belong to the creative period in the history of the 
church, — to the apostolic age. There is no feeble imita- 
tion, and no crude eclecticism, which mark a later and de- 
pendent period. Drawn by the magnetism of a great 
presence, the evangelists indulge in no fine writing, but 
simply bear witness to the words and deeds of Jesus ; and 
the apostles, in familiar letters, unfold the worth and sig- 
nificancy of his person and his work. The power and 
freshness with which they write, show that they drank at 
the fountain-head of Christian truth, and that they were 
the foremost men in the grounding of the Christian church. 
As we pass from their works to the circle of writings which 
immediately follow them, we find ourselves in a far lower 
sphere of thought and feeling. Foreign elements have 



HISTORICAL C/TARACTEJi OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 49 

mingled in the clear, fresh stream, colored its waters, and 
weakened its life. The apostolic writings could no more 
belong to the second century, than the works of Plato could 
have been composed in the age of Plutarch, or any classic 
production of original and creative power could have been 
conceived or brought to birth in a period of intellectual 
feebleness. 

We need, however, to be more specific. Let us, then 
first examine the Gospels. These bear traces of having 
been composed by the men to whom they are ascribed. 
The authors must have been either eye-witnesses of the 
events they narrate, or else must give us the evidence of di- 
rect testimony. This is plain, from their intimate acquaint- 
ance with the details of the Saviour's public life, and their 
careful silence on whatever was outside of their knowl- 
iedjie, or would merely minister to human curiosity. 
Thus the Gospels lack every mark of mere pragmatic his- 
tories, nor do their authors show themselves versed in the 
art of historical composition. They make no estimate ot 
the influences which went to mould the character of Jesus ; 
nor do they mark the successive steps by which he came to 
be all he was on his entrance on his public mission. They 
even subordinate the order of time to that of moral affinity, 
and often group together discourses which were spoken on 
different occasions, but which are united by common spirit- 
ual elements. In a like manner, too, they often depart 
from a mere chronological arrangement in their narration 
of tho events in the life of our Lord. Still the discourses 
always grow naturally out of the occasion and incidents of 
the narrative. In short, they are not artists, but witnesses. 
and their Gospels are only their continued testimony that 
the Son of God has in fact appeared in human history. 
5 



60 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 

Each of the synoptics maintains his distinctive peculiar- 
ity. Matthew, as a Jew, who had spent most of his life in 
Palestine, writes for his countrjrmen. He naturally pre- 
sents Christianity as a theocratic kingdom. He is full in 
his account of the Saviour's discourses, but brief and 
generic in his outlines of events. His work has the 
rhythm, too, of the Hebraistic style. Mark, the companion 
of the Apostle Peter, whose ardor he seems to have im- 
bibed naturally, writes for the Crentile converts. As 
might have been expected from his associations, he is brief 
in the evangelical discourses, but full and graphic in 
his narrative. Luke was a Hellenist, and so betrays his 
culture and calling in his Gospels. As the companion of 
Paul, he exhibits that spirit of universality which charac- 
terized the Apostle to the Gentiles. He wrote for his 
Roman friend Theophilus, and is more complete in 
his narrative of events than any of the other evangel- 
ists. 

The agreement of these three Gospels is natural. The 
synoptics give a portraiture of Jesus after a common type. 
That type had been fixed by the historical character of the 
apostolic preaching. The events and discourses of our 
Lord had been, doubtless, often rehearsed in public 
by men personally called to that work by Christ, and 
had also been repeated in private in every Christian 
family in the empire. Thus an oral Gospel had become 
embedded in the minds and hearts of the early disciples. 
Now, the synoptics had no wish and no motive to work 
over these materials. Each simply selected such elements 
as suited his tastes and habits of thought, and the special 
purposes he had in view in writing his Gospel. 

It was given to John to receive and treasure up the 



aiSTORICAl CHARACTER OP THE NEW TESTAMENT. 51 

deeper discourses of our Lord. This was but an instance 
striking, but not exceptional, of the great law of moral 
congruitj. Like souls only can interpret each other. 
John, though separated far from Him in whom there was 
the fulness of humanity as well as divinity, was yet nearer 
to him than any other of the chosen disciples, and so was 
naturally the author of the last Gospel. His record thus 
becomes the complement of the synoptic narrative. 

John writes according to his distinctive character and 
distinctive aim. The synoptics had presented Christ 
as the Messiah, — the new theocratic king, foretold 
by prophets, and accredited by word and deed. He would 
present Christ as the Son of God, whose credentials were 
given in his own superhuman life and character. Living, 
as the apostle did, at Ephesus, amid the currents of religious 
speculation, he is led to unfold those profounder sayings of 
our Lord, in which he presents himself as at once the fuF 
Bevealer and the final Revelation of the Father. The 
synoptic representation deals largely with the parables of 
our Lord, and his simpler and more ethical discourses, and 
so gives mainly a Galilean ministry; while John, who 
seeks to report his deeper and more enigmatical words, must 
concern himself chiefly with his ministry in Judea, where 
the most frequent and fit occasion would be found for their 
utterance. Yet the one aspect ever involves the other. 
Each account has marked traces of the other. He 
who assumed the office of the Messiah in the villages of the 
North, is the same as he who unfolded the mysteries of hif 
own character in the national capital, and amid the memo* 
rials of the national faith. The conception of Christ was 
ever one and the same throughout the early church. 
John's more dramatic presentation of the Lord's life is iu 



52 EVIDENCES OF CnRISTtANlTY. 

perfect agreement with the more simple nairative of the 
other evangelists. 

All the four writers, each in his own way, maintain 
throughout the attitude of witnesses. Thej explain none 
of the enigmas in the words of Jesiis. Thej never praise 
the goodness nor the heroism of his character. They even 
expose their own ignorance, and dissensions, and unbelief, 
without any palliation, whenever the narrative demands 
it at their hands. They indulge in no speculations, and 
give themselves up to no moral reflections. Utterly self- 
forgetful, they abandon themselves to the one purpose, 
namely, to give an honest report of those sayings and 
vioings of Christ which had mirrored themselves in their 
own souls. 

We need not stop to consider any of the alleged dis- 
crepancies. Criticism has so far disposed of them, that 
vhey no more affect the credibility of the New Testament 
nistory, than the worm-holes or soiled pages of an ancient 
manuscript aifect its genuineness. Who thinks of reject- 
ing Livy or Polybius as credible histories because they so 
widely differ in tracing the march of Hannibal across 
the Alps? And are not the testimonies of witnesses re- 
ceived as true, notwithstanding their many minor and 
superficial discrepancies? And are not even the reports of 
legal judgments admitted when they cannot be easily rec- 
onciled ? 

But the historical portion of the New Testament is the 
foundation of the entire collection, and its credibility, as a 
genuine and authentic production of the times it represents, 
demands a more detailed examination. Every reader of 
the Gospels and of the Acts is struck with the numerous 
and casual allusions to the iiistory of the times, to the 



HISTORICAL CHARACTEIi OF THE NEW TESTAMENl. 53 

geography and to the climate of Palestine, and also to the 
manners, the customs, and the institutions of her people. 
These allusions are wrought into the verj fabric of 
the narratives, and are undoubted evidences of the age in 
which they originated. 

Thus the physical features of the Holy Land are accu- 
rately noted by the evangelists. We may start from either 
of the two centres of our Lords ministry, — from Galilee 
or from Jerusalem, — and we shall find the notices of local- 
ities verified by the existing outlines of the surface of the 
country. We may take our departure from the Northern 
Lake. All along its borders are still to be seen the ruins 
of the cities where the Saviour wrought his mighty works. 
Its eastern shore is still lined by hills from whose deep-cut 
ravines the ''storm of wind comes down on the lake," as it 
did in the days of the apostles. The relative position and 
distances of places are correctly given, and still indicate the 
general contour of Galilee. Thus the route from Cana to 
Capernaum is a continuous descent, justifying the phrase, 
''Come down:" and the distance between these places 
answers to the notations of time in the Gospel. The 
" five and twenty or thirty furlongs " would now, as 
in the days of John, place a vessel in the midst of the 
Sea of Galilee. On the north and east of this lake there 
are now solitudes, as there were when Jesus sought alone 
communion with his Father. 

Again, leaving the holy city, — the southern centre 
of his labors, — we find the surroundings are noticed just 
as the existing features of the country demand. The 
brook Kedron is but a step from the eastern walls, and 
just beyond is Gethsemane, and above the Garden ia 
Olivet, now, as of old, over against the Mount Moriah. 
5* 



54 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

The Pool of Siloam is still shown to travellers. The 
way ''down" to the plains of Jericho, even at the present 
day, leads through a desert region, abounding in ravines 
and caverns, — the natural homes of thieves and rob- 
bers, as is intimated in the parable of the Good Samaritan, 
As one journeys toward the north, he may meet with 
Jacob's well ; and on the edge of the great plain he will 
see the very mountain to which the Samaritan woman 
pointed when she exclaimed, ''Our fathers worshipped in 
this mountain." As the traveller journeys on and reaches 
Nazareth, he there beholds the identical hill with its over- 
hanging brow, from whose summit the infuriated rabble 
sought to hurl our Lord. 

The passing and unstudied allusions to the climate of 
Palestine are truthful. The winter is casually identified', 
«rith the rainy season in the simple words, "It was 
winter, and Jesus walked in Solomon's porch." The indi- 
cations of fair and foul weather are the same as in the days 
of our Saviour. The rain, the flood, the wind, are still 
the marks of the winter-storm, as when embodied in the 
imagery of Christ. 

The products of the country, the grape, the olive, the 
fig, the sycamore, the wheat and the tares, testify to the 
accuracy of the record. The ancient coins of Judea exhibit 
a captive under the palm-tree, and thus show that even 
here the evangelic narrative is reliable, though so few 
date-trees are now found in that region. The withered 
grass is still "cast into the oven" for fuel, and the plough 
even now has but one handle, in exact literal accordance 
with the expression, "He that jutteth his hand to the 
plough," etc. The wild honey is gathered by the present 
dwellers from the trees and rocks that abound in the wild 



BISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 55 

region near the Dead Sea, and locusts are an article of 
food for the poorer people, as well as in the days of John 
the Baptist. 

The notice of political personages and of civil institu- 
tions accords with what profane history teaches us. Pales- 
tine was, at the birth of our Lord, under Herod the 
Great, whose two characteristic traits, namely, cruelty and 
munificence, are brought out in the Bethlehem massa- 
cre and in the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple with in- 
creased splendor. When Joseph and his family returned 
from Egypt, the country was found divided among the 
sons of Herod. But, on the appearance of John the Bap- 
tist, Judea had already been reduced to a Roman province 
under Pontius Pilate, while Galilee was left under Herod 
A.ntipas. The notice, too, of this prince, answers to his 
character. The opposition of John to his infamous mar- 
riage, and his rebukes ' ' for all the evils he had done, ' ' 
led to the execution of the prophet. The narrative thus 
not only notes his unscrupulousness and sensuality, but 
also reveals the weakness of a despot who values his repu- 
tation more than his character. In the continuation of 
the early history of the church, by Luke, we find Judea 
has ceased for a time to be a Roman province. Herod 
Agrippa the First now succeeds to the estates of his 
grandfather, and the old kingdom of Palestine is restored. 
Under a native prince, he soon shows the genuine Hero- 
dian spirit in the execution of James, and the imprison- 
ment of Peter. The manner of his death accords with the 
account given by Josephus. He is smitten by Heaven for 
his impiety, in allowing himself to be addressed as a god 
by his flatterers. His son, Agrippa the Second, succeeds 
tr a portion of his father's estate, and Judea is once more 



56 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a Roman province. Now, in all these complicated changes 
so casually noticed by the writers, the historical character 
of the narrative is plainly indicated. 

There was a singular complication in the civil status of 
Palestine, growing out of its anomalous condition as a 
Roman province, which none but a Jew and a contem- 
porary could have alluded to with easy familiarity. Thus, 
we find a reference to the occasional exercise of power of 
the "Governor of Syria," the chief representative of 
Rome in the East, in the taxing under Cyrenius ; to the 
divisions between the civil and the ecclesiastical authority, 
as seen in the persons of the High Priest and of the Pro- 
curator ; in the two tribunals ; in the two spheres of juris- 
diction ; in the two modes of punishment ; and in the two 
military forces. This coexistence, it is to be noted, came 
to an end before the close of the first century. 

The domestic sind social manners and usages are fre- 
quently alluded to in a like incidental manner. Sepul- 
chres hewn out of a rock, and whitened, still attract the 
attention of the traveller. The house-thief must now, as 
then, dig through (as the Greek signifies) the clay walls 
of the common dwelling. The wise man will now, as then, 
build his house on the rock which almost everywhere un- 
derlies the soil of the country. Two women may be seen 
now. as in the days of Christ, grinding at the same mill ; 
and sheep and goats pasture together, and are separated 
at night by the shepherd. The temple, with its festivals 
and rites, the synagogue, with its freer worship, and the 
sanhedrim, are all referred to just as we should expect. 
In fact, irregularities in the office of the Jewish pontificate 
are implied in a remark that ' ' Caiaphas was high priest 
t^iat same year." 



HISTOmCAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT, bl 

All these minute but incidental references wrought into 
the gospel narrative fasten the scenes of Christ's life to one 
narrow spot on the eastern borders of the Great Sea. and 
confine them w^ithin the opening years of the apostolic age. 

The Acts of the Apostles naturally follows the Gospels. 
The Christ of history becomes the Christ of the church. 
He who wrought visible wonders before the eyes of the 
disciples now works invisibly, but none the less really, 
on the souls of men. A new spiritual movement in the 
Gentile as well as the Jewish world has been initiated, and 
the kingdom of God is thus founded in all the great cities 
of the empire. 

The narrative gives us varied forms of human life. 
The scenes are constantly changing. We pass from Pales- 
tine to Syria, and thence to Asia Minor, and to Greece, 
and finally to Rome. New personages, new customs, and 
new institutions are presented or suggested to our view. 
Paul is now a violent Jewish partisan, and now a humble 
disciple and chosen apostle of Christ ; now a fugitive from 
the hate of his countrymen, and now a defender of the 
faith before the philosophers at Athens ; now a prisoner 
before a Roman magistrate, and now sent across the sea to 
stand his trial in the capital of the empire. In all this 
diversified narrative, the allusions to places, to persons, 
to usages, to the opinions and institutions of the times, are 
faithful to history, and yet often so incidentally given as 
to preclude all idea of intention on the part of the writer. 

The notices of Greek and Roman life and manners are 
minutely accurate. Thus Athens is alluded to as the re- 
sort of strangers, — a well-known fact in ancient history. 
The Athenians, too, are portrayed as religious in their 
sentiments, but as sceptical in their belief; as fond of 



58 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

novelty, but averse to all exhibitions of moral earnest-- 
ness. They left Paul as soon as he began to speak of a 
future judgment. All this accords with the accounts we 
have of them from their own writers and historians. The 
reference to the tumult at Ephesus — to its cause and its 
incidents — agrees with the ancient coins, and with the 
inscriptions still found in the ruins of the ancient city. 
It is to be noted that the ancient world could not have 
witnessed a mob caused by any outrage on the moral sense. 
The public conscience was dead. It was only self-interest 
ivhich could have called forth any public outbreak. The 
'Great Goddess Diana " was the title given to the heathen 
livinity in ancient times, and the name of the ' ' town 
clerk " is found in the inscriptions in the neighborhood of 
Ephesus. That a large church should have been gathered 
at Corinth, and so few been converted at Athens, is what 
might have been expected. Intellectual pride is a deadlier 
foe to the religion of the cross than even sensual vices. 
Everywhere in the Acts we meet with traces of the spirit 
and method of Roman administration. We find a tolerant 
temper born of indifference ; a sense of justice in insist- 
ing that the accused and the accuser should be brought 
face to face ; a recognition of the privileges of a Roman 
citizen, whether acquired by birth or by purchase ; a 
right of appeal possessed by the provincials ; the punish- 
m3nt of aliens by scourging and by crucifixion. All this 
is but a small part of the internal evidence which goes to 
demonstrate that the Acts of the Apostles is a historical 
work. 

The Epistles follow the Acts, as they seem to interpret 
the historical books. This form of composition renders 
imposture or invention quite impossible. Everything i» 



HISTORICAL CnARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 59 

the style, in the method, in the spirit, and in the occasion 
and object, as well as in the relations of the parties to each 
Dther, and to the age and country in which they live, so 
individualizes and localizes the writings, that any forgery 
is altogether out of the question. The references to con- 
temporary persons ; to the germinant errors and parties 
of the day ; to the attitude of the various classes of the 
Gentile world ; to the private and public relations of 
prominent personages ; — all these, taken in unison, give 
a moral demonstration that these letters — at least the 
longer ones of Paul — are perfectly trustworthy docu- 
ments. 

The numerous undesigned coincidences between these 
several portions of the New Testament lead to the same 
result. Thus the style of Luke in the Gospel is the same 
as in the Acts. It is marked by the recurrence of favorite 
words, and stamped with idioms peculiar to this evangelist. 
In this fact we have the clearest internal evidence of a 
common authorship. Thus the word Christ is in the 
Gospels and Acts an appellative designating Jesus as the 
Anointed, — the Messiah ; while in the Epistles it passes 
into a proper name. This accords with the relation in 
which these portions of the New-Testament canon stand to 
each other. Besides, we have in the Acts the speeches 
of Peter, James, and Paul. Now, when we come to com- 
pare them with the Epistles written by the same men, we 
notice a marked, though unstudied agreement, both in the 
modes of conception and of expression. 

It is instructive, in reference to the specific point we are 
now considering, to see how each great character preserves 
its distinctive individuality throughout the Gospels, the 
Acts, and the Epistles. We may take the Apostle Peter aa 



<50 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

an instance. Thus the evangelists, in all their direct 
or casual allusions to him, represent him as the foremost of 
the apostles. He heads all the catalogues of the twelve. 
He takes the lead in asking and answering questions. It 
was on his confession that Christ said, " Thou art Peter : 
on this rock," etc. He alone declines having his feet 
washed bj his Master. He alone ventures to walk on the 
sea, and only sinks when his faith fails him. At the trans- 
figuration he boldlj proposes three tabernacles, ''not 
knowing what he said." In the garden he draws the 
sword and cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest, 
and is again reproved by Christ. He openly denies his 
Saviour at his trial ; but, as Jesus turns and looks on him, 
he goes out and weeps bitterly. He is the first to enter 
the tomb where our Lord was laid. After the resurrec- 
tion, when Christ thrice put to him the same question^ in 
allusion to his three denials, notwithstanding his boastful 
claim of his superior loyalty, " Lovest thou me more than 
these ? " he could, from a grieved and honest heart, say, 
" Lord, thou knowest all things ; thou knowest that I love 
thee." He is foremost in proposing the election of a suc- 
cessor to Judas, and in preaching on the day of Pentecost. 
He takes the lead in word and deed in grounding the 
church. He resists the Judaizers of his day, and announces 
that the Gospel was designed equally for Gentile as for 
Jew. But yet, true to his character, he vacillates in his 
treatment of the Gentile converts, and is rebuked by his 
brother apostle. He yields not only to this reproof, but, io 
noble self-forgetfulness, also to the growing leadership of 
the great Apostle to the Gentiles. His Epistles mark their 
author as a man of ardent temperament, and of great single- 
ness and purity of purpose. The disinterestedness of his 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Gl 

nature reveals itself in the way he speaks of Paul ; for he 
not only recognizes the intellectual superiority of the new 
convert, but expresses towards him the warmest personal 
friendship. In all these notices of Peter, and in all these 
indications of his character, we meet with an individual 
personality developed according to its own distinctive type, 
and brought out on manifold occasions and amid trying 
junctures, and yet the same in all its showings. The 
Apostle Peter is ever the rash, but honest, the fickle, yet, in 
the core of his heart, the loyal disciple, ardently attached 
to Jesus, — a noble and magnanimous soul, whose very 
failings make us love him all the more. 

These coincidences need not, however, be noticed fur- 
ther, as Paley has given a classical treatise on this subject 
in his "Horae Paulinae." 

The Apocalypse is the prophetic book of the New Tes- 
tament, and fitly closes the canon. The claims of John 
as its author rest on adequate grounds ; for the author 
may well have been a disciple whose quiet, contemplative 
nature had been roused from its hidden depths by the 
great wrongs of the Neronian persecution, and whose 
prophetic sense had been awakened and sustained by an 
unshaken faith in the grand triumph of the new religion. 
Now, a simple, ardent soul like that of Peter could not 
have composed the Revelation. The fire might have 
flashed forth, but could not have sustained itself Nor 
could a logical mind like Paul have produced such a 
work. He would not have dwelt in such a series of grand 
and imposing symbols. Nor could James, with his prac- 
tical and ethical turn of mind, have written the book. 
The writer could only be a man who united a depth of 
feeling and a spiritual insight with a creative imagination 



62 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Such a man was the Apostle John. The eagle was the em- 
blem with which the ancient church marked his character. 
When he wrote the Gospel in the quiet of Ephesus, hia 
wings were folded ; but when he penned the Apocalypse, 
he did it with outstretched pinions, and with a fiery, eagle 
glance. It is noteworthy that John desired to destroy the 
Samaritan village for refusing to entertain his Master and 
the disciples ; and equally so that he received in connec- 
tion with his brother, at the hand of Christ, the designa- 
tion of Son of Thunder. 

It would be easy to show a progress in the development 
of Christian truth as we pass from the Gospels to the Acts, 
and from the Acts to the Epistles ; but, as this has already 
been implied, it need not be here developed. 

May we not, then, conclude that the New Testament 
bears on its very face the clearest internal evidence of its 
genuineness and authenticity ? 



SECTION SECOND. 

THE EXTERNAL EVTDENCB. 

This is the same in kind as in the case of other ancient 
writings, but greater in degree than that which we have for 
any other ancient document whatever. It is the same in 
kind, because it rests on references and citations found in 
later writings. It is greater in degree, for the reason that 
we have far more numerous and far more ample allusions 
and quotations from our present canonical books in post- 
apostolic works than we have from the writings of the 
most admired classic author in the remains of his contem- 
poraries or successors. Besides, we have a special testi- 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 63 

monj to the authenticity of the New Testament in its 
early versions in the leading languages of the Old World. 

This fulness of historical evidence was owing to the 
unique character of the sacred canon, and to the peculiar 
guardianship to which it was intrusted. Reverence for its 
authors, and a profound regard for their narratives and 
epistles, led to these multiplied citations and translations . 
The church, too, naturally proved a better keeper of au- 
thoritative documents, than the republic of letters has 
ever been of its most valued treasures. Its very continu- 
ity of life amidst great changes of society, and the neces- 
sity early felt of having some standard by which to settle 
its controversies and form its doctrinal systems, made it 
the special guardian of its sacred library and of its sole 
law-book. 

As our purpose is apologetical, and not purely critical, 
we shall only note the main points of the evidence. 

On the very confines of the second century, we meet 
with the beginnings of an Apocryphal literature, which 
continues to grow for some three centuries. Separated as 
this is from our canonical books by its local circulation, by 
the puerility of its contents, and by its want of general 
authority, it plainly reveals the lateness of its origin. 
The Apocrypha does not, in the main, alter the ground- 
work of our evangelical narrative, but fills up imagined 
gaps in the sacred record, and seeks to adorn with false 
ornament the work of the great masters. Its fancies are 
only foreign growths, which have rooted themselves on the 
surface of the original stalk, and sent forth their weak 
and worthless parasitic shoots. They thus indicate a sub- 
apostolic period, and bear on their very face the accretions 
of an age which had fallen somewhat from the earnest 



84 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

ipirit of the opening era of the Christian Church. Thus 
these Apocryphal Gospels presuppose the original biogra- 
phies of our Lord. 

The Apostolic Fathers belonged to the age which imme- 
diately followed that of the apostles. They fairly repre- 
sent the opinions of the entire church of their times, since 
they wrote from the chief seats of the Christian faith, — 
from Rome, from Ephesus, and from Antioch. They re- 
fer to the apostles as the only authoritative teachers of 
the churchy and thus indicate the principles on which 
alone a written rule of faith could be formed. 

We do not find many express formal citations from the 
books of the New Testament, but frequent indirect refer- 
ences to apostolic preaching. This is just what we should 
expect from their position and their surroundings. They 
had heard the apostles themselves, or had received with 
others the oral Gospel as the common possession of the 
church, and so did not need to cite the written record, oi 
to refer to any well-known apostolic writing. 

There are, however, exceptions to this indefinite refer- 
ence. Thus Clement of Rome, in writing to the Corin- 
thian Church, reminds them of the fact that Paul had 
already written to them. Thus, too, Polycarp reminds 
the Philippians of the letter they had received from the 
apostle. Barnabas cites from Matthew the very words of 
Christ: "Many are called, but few are chosen; " for he 
quotes, with the proper formula of citations, "As it is 
written." 

These references, then, to a growing canon, are all that 
could be expected in an age when some of the apostles 
wore still alive, and when their teachings were still fresh 
in the memory of the early church. Besides, any more 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Ga 

express allusions to the apostolic writings before these had 
passed from their several local centres would have been 
simply impossible. Some time must elapse before copies 
could be multiplied and circulated, especially when the 
labor of transcribing them was both difficult and expen- 
sive ; and a still longer time must elapse ere these copies 
could be collected in one volume, and be everywhere 
received and recognized as canonical. 

Justin, a native of Palestine and afterwards a teacher 
in Rome, was the first Christian writer after the Apostolic 
Fathers who notices such a collection. He had in his pos- 
session our present Gospels, which he termed the Memo- 
rabilia of the Apostles. The references are evidently 
drawn from his memory, according to the custom of his 
day, and according to his purpose as a Christian apologist. 
He mentions them as being read in the churches, and at- 
taches to them an importance equal to that of the sacred 
canon of the Jews. He gives us all the main facts in the 
life of our Lord, from his nativity to his passion ; and 
gives them, too, in such language as argues an acquaint- 
ance with original and authentic documents. When we 
remember the high character of this witness, his intimate 
knowledge of both the Syrian and the Roman Church, 
and the fact, too, that he lived and wrote within five 
decades of the death of John, his witness is entitled to 
great weight. 

The testimony of this philosopher and martyr is con- 
firmed by that of the earliest Christian fathers. Near 
the close of the second century, and within three genera- 
tions after the death of the last of the apostles, Irena3ua 
of Gaul, Clement of Egypt, and Tertullian of Nortk 

Africa, give us the New-Testament canon as we now iiave 
6* 



66 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

it, with generally unimportant exceptions. The first of 
these fathers is a credible witness, as he claims to have 
had a personal acquaintance with Poljcarp, the intimate 
disciple of John, and of ''others who had seen the Lord." 
He held that our four Gospels were exclusively entitled to 
be considered authoritative. He distinguishes them as 
"those which have been handed down to us." The sec- 
ond of these fathers was the head of the Alexandrian 
School, a person of extensive learning and of wide ac- 
quaintance, and so must be regarded as a representative 
man. The third also belongs to the same class, and was 
thoroughly versed in all the traditions of the church. 
Thus we find that the canon presents itself as nearly com- 
plete in all the great centres of the empire ; and that, too, 
within a century after the close of the apostolic age. We 
see that nearly all its most important writings have been 
collected, transcribed, and distributed throughout all the 
provinces within the circle of the Mediterranean Sea. It 
is beyond question, then, that this collection first presents 
itself as the heritage of a past age. It thus comes before 
us, not as a novelty, or as a fresh product of the times, 
but as the creation of the men who founded those churches 
which could witness to its authenticity. 

The early heretics and pagans strongly corroborate this 
testimony of the fathers. These early separatists appeal 
to the writings of the apostles as authentic productions. 
They often misinterpreted them, and sometimes mutilated 
them, but never doubted their authority, except on purely 
dogmatic grounds. Thus Irenseus remarks, that "our 
Gospels are so firmly established that the heretics them- 
selves bear witness to them ; and every one starts from 
them in his attempts to confirm his own doctrines." The 



aiSTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 67 

Alogi did, indeed, reject the Gospel of John, but from 
purely doctrinal reasons, and ascribed it. in the same ar- 
bitrary way, to Cerinthus. This need not surprise us, 
when we remember that the Platonic canon was treated in 
the same way. For Pansetius, a Stoic philosopher, re- 
jected even the Phaedon as one of Plato's works, simply 
because it taught the immortality of the soul. Basilides 
of Alexandria, a contemporary of the immediate disciple? 
of the apostles, referred especially to the Gospel of John. 
While he naturally alludes to other documents, he admits 
all the leading events of the evangelic record. Another 
Gnostic, Valentinus, also removed only by a, generation 
from the apostolic age, certainly recognized, among other 
books, the Gospel of John. Now, he taught in Rome, 
t^here all the ancient traditions of the church would natu- 
rally be carried ; and so his testimony is altogether appo- 
site. Heracleon, the pupil of the latter, wrote a commen- 
tary on the fourth Gospel, and probably also on Luke. 
Marcion, a contemporary of Justin, admitted Luke, and 
ten of Paul's Epistles. The reason that he rejected others 
was purely arbitrary. He insisted that Paul alone — and 
that, too, after he had freed himself from Jewish preju- 
dices — was the true representative of Christianity, and so 
reje ;ted all writings that had not the stamp of his author- 
ity. It is to be noted that this Gnostic did not deny the 
authenticity of the other books of the New Testament, 
but only their authoritative character. It is evident, then, 
from the testimony of these heretics, that the m(|3t impor- 
tant of our Gospels was known and widely circulate within 
thirty years after the death of its reputed author. We 
must, then, conclude that it was written within the life- 
time of John, and, if so, that it was his composition. We 



68 EVIDENCES OF CHRTSTIANITY. 

can escape this conclusion only by the incredible supposi^ 
tion that the Gnostics originated our fourth Gospel as soon 
as the apostle was in his grave, and secured for it, notwith- 
standing they were everywhere opposed, a speedy and un- 
questioned recognition as his genuine work throughout the 
universal church. 

Celsus may be here taken as an exponent of the more 
learned pagan opponents of Christianity. He wrote his 
bitter invective against Christianity near the middle of 
the second century. Now, he declares that he drew his 
views of the new religion from the ' ' writings of the dis- 
ciples of Jesus." He admits that these Gospels and Epis- 
tles were composed by the persons whose names they bear,' 
and by those to whom the church generally attribute them. 
He only charges them with mistakes and inconsistencies, 
and affirms that they borrowed their best opinions from the 
philosophers. The weakness of his criticism is apparent, 
but that only renders his testimony the more valuable. 
Thus heretic and pagan alike bear witness to the authen- 
ticity of our sacred books. 

The last independent but contemporary witnesses to the 
historical character of these writings are the early versions 
of the New Testament, and the fragment found by the 
Italian critic, Muratori. The ancient Syriac translation 
called the Peshito — perhaps from the simplicity of its 
style, or from its literalness — belonged to the early part 
of the second century. It contained no uncanonical work, 
and thus shows that the unapostolic writings, however 
much they may have been prized by single individuals or 
churches, never had any general recognition. This ver- 
sion gives our present Gospels and the Epistles, with the 
exception of the Second and Third of John, Second of 



niSTORICAL CFTARACTER OP THE NEW TESTAMENT 03 

Peter, and the Apocalypse. The ancient Latin version of 
versions date as far back as the close of the second cen- 
tury, and contain, we may believe, all, or nearly all, of 
our present collection. Such is the plain inference from 
the references in the Latin fathers. The Muratorian frag- 
ment, although it is mutilated at the beginning and close, 
gives us a catalogue of nearly all our canonical books. It 
is in Latin, but rests on a Greek original. It was discov- 
ered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, and belongs to 
the middle or close of the second century. Thus most, if 
aot all, the apostolic writings must have been everywhere 
generally received within the second century, and so must 
nave originated in the preceding age. 

As soon as we leave this period, we find all the books 
)f our canon recognized by the churches throughout an- 
cient Christendom. Origen, the scholar of that age, for- 
nally quotes from them all. In fact, his references are 
rio numerous that the New Testament could almost be re- 
j)roduced from his works alone. If. here and there, doubt 
^till lingered with regard to the authenticity of some of 
the books, owing to dogmatic prejudices, oi- to a lack of 
evidence of their apostolic origin, these soon gave place to 
a full credence. 

From this point the lines of testimony branch out in all 
diiections, and form a network of evidence too complicated 
to be followed, as it is too strong to be broken or weakened 
by any sceptical criticism whatever. 

As we have intimated, very many interesting questions 
have purposely been left untouched ; e.g.^ that of an Ara- 
nisean or Hebrew original of the Gospel of Matthew, and ita 
relation to the so-called "Gospel according to the Hebrews." 
All such questions belong to the province of criticism. 



70 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

Thus, then, long before any council had decided what 
books should be received as authoritative, the church held 
already as canonical those writings, and those alone, which 
had the sanction of apostolic authority. This decision 
was the natural and spontaneous expression of the com- 
mon judgment of Christendom. We only remark in pass- 
ing, that the historical chai^cter of any one of the Gospels, 
or any one of the longer Epistles, would give an adequate 
historical basis for the Christian religion. 

That the New Testament has been transmitted to us in 
its essential integrity allows of no doubt whatever. It 
was watched over by the church, guarded by opposing 
sects, embalmed in diverse languages, and preserved in 
several hundred manuscripts more or less perfect, some of 
which run back to the fourth or fifth centuries. The dis- 
crepancies which exist between these manuscripts are, in- 
deed, very numerous, but, for the most part, absolutely 
insignificant, and do net affect in the least the historical 
value of the New Testament. 



SECTION THIBD. 

THE SCEPTICAL THEORIES. 

Were the New Testament writings the forgeries of a later 
age ? But who could create such an ideal character as that 
of Jesus, and draw it out with such naturalness ? Who 
could have written the Acts, or have forged all the Epis- 
tles, with their distinctive styles, their variety of incidents, 
and their geographical, historical, and personal allusions ? 
Who could haye secured the unity of spirit and thought 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NFAV TESTAMENT. 71 

which runs through the entire collection? What motive 
had they to fabricate them, and palm them off as the pro- 
ductions of apostolic men? How shall we account for their 
perfect success ? Who Avere these men of genius who stand 
mt solitary and alone in the field of fiction, and yet are so 
unknown to fame ? What place shall we find for them in 
the ages following the apostolic period? Did some one 
master-mind compose the whole twenty-seven books, or did 
some eight men combine to impose on the world ? Such 
an hypothesis, in the light of these difficulties and in the 
presence of the facts already considered, is absolutely in- 
credible. A forgery of such a character would be a 
greater miracle in literature than any physical wonder 
recorded in the Scriptures themselves. 

Nor can we vary the theory, and ascribe the collection 
to a series of pious frauds, mutually concurring and sup- 
porting each other. The supposition that all these works 
so various in form, so creative in spirit, and so distinctive 
in style, were composed under the cover of a falsehood, 
and in the interests of Christianity, is at war with reason 
and history. Oral tradition of so wide a compass, and 
with so many minute details, could hardly be embodied ir 
so pure a form in a sub-apostolic age. Still less could the 
writings of later and feebler hands be palmed off as the 
productions of the apostles. But the Epistles, which pre- 
suppose the Gospels, and which have the impress of origi- 
nality and apostolicity wrought into their very structure, 
absolutely preclude, in the light of historical criticism, 
any such hypothesis. 

The idea that the writers were honest but deluded men 
is no less absurd. How could they be deceived in regard 
to facts coming under their own observation, and supported 



72 EVIDENCES OF CURISTIANITT, 

often by the testimony of concurring witnesses ? How, 
too, could the J be mistaken in reading their own conscious- 
ness, when the reality and the permanence of the inward 
change were verified by a life of heroic self-denial ? 

As an example of the first case, — namely, of the real- 
ity of the fact which appealed to their senses, — we may 
take the resurrection of our Lord. Christ appeared some 
ten or twelve times, to difierent persons, and under difier- 
ent circumstances. Now, the hallucination could not have 
been the same to so many difierent minds, on so many occa- 
sions, and in so very difierent places, unless the expecta- 
tion of the event was so regnant and so exclusive — in 
fact, so engrossing — as to mislead the united testimony 
of all the leading senses of all the witnesses on every occa- 
sion. Such a view not only involves inherent difiiculties, 
but is in plain and flat contradiction to the facts of the 
narrative. All the disciples expected to find the body of 
their Master still in the sepulchre. All seemed surprised 
at the first news of his resurrection, and some would not 
believe until they had direct and sensible proof of the 
event. The apostles, it is to be remembered, had the evi- 
dence of the eye, the ear, and the touch, as to the verity 
of Christ's bodily presence, and as to the identity of his 
person. It will not help the sceptic if, in his inconsist- 
ency, he resorts, for a moment, to the idea of conscious 
deception ; for, if the friends of Jesus, weak as they were. 
could remove the body of our Lord, then their self-delusion 
would be dissipated, and thus their moral enthusiasm 
would soon die out. This subterfuge, too, leaves un- 
touched the testimony of the senses to the reality of the 
risen presence. Besides, such an imposture in such a 
cause is simply impossible. Self-denial is not so sweet 



mSTOmCAL CHAUACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. T'd 

that men will become dishonest for the sake of enjoying 
it. The character of the new faith, and the responsibili- 
ties of its profession, as well as the foreseen fate of its 
adherents, preclude this notion. But, on the other hand, if 
the enemies of Jesus remcTed the body, then all they had 
fo do was to produce the corpse, in order to fix the despair 
of the early disciples, and to consign their cause to a 
speedy and irretrievable ruin. The presence and remem- 
brance of the dishonored body of Christ would have 
destroyed utterly and forever all faith in his resurrection. 
Jesus, then, did certainly appear to his chosen disciples 
and others after his death. 

Will it be said that he did not, after all, really die, but 
only swooned ? But consider the night of exhaustion, with 
its weight of care and sleepless hours, which preceded the 
trial: the failure of the sufferer's strength on the way 
to Calvary ; the nailing of his hands and of his feet to 
the cross ; his long suspension there, and the deadly 
thrust of the Roman soldier. Would not all this have pro- 
duced death ? Were the hostile Jews mistaken in think- 
ing him dead? Were the executioners, so accustomed to 
judge in such matters, also deceived ? Did Jesus deceive 
himself, in imagining that he had died and risen, when he 
had only swooned and recovered ; and were his predictions 
of his own resurrection a like mistake ? But this des- 
perate supposition of a swoon is completely set aside by 
the fact that Jesus appeared suddenly in full vigor, and 
in the full use of all his faculties. 

Xeither Zeller nor Strauss will tolerate the idea of a 
sudden restoration to vigor, after the scenes of the cruci- 
fixion. Zeller says, "that any one, who, after a long and 

exhausting abuse, was crucified, and left on the cross at 
7 



74 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT. 

least six hours, and then taken clown with all the sjmp 
toms of death, — that such an one, after being without food 
for two days and a half, and shut up in a sepulchre without 
anj care, should have revived in virtue of the restorative 
power of nature, after about thirty-six hours, and have 
been at once in a condition to undertake a pedestrian ex- 
cursion either to Galilee or to Emmaus, is so exceed- 
ingly improbable that we are compelled to call for the 
most irrefragable proof in order to believe it. . . . Be- 
sides, a natural revival could not have produced at all in 
the disciples the belief which we find them showing in 
the sequel." Strauss declares "that a being who had 
stolen half dead out of the sepulchre, — who crept about, 
weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, and who re- 
quired bandaging, strengthening, and indulgence, — could 
never have given to his disciples the impression that he 
was the conqueror over death, — the Prince of Life, — 
an impression which lay at the basis of their future min- 
istry." So. the new school of sceptics will not tolerate 
their forerunners. 

As an example of the second case, of their power to 
read their own consciousness, we may take the conversion 
of Paul. His consciousness on this point was clear and 
full. He makes frequent allusions to it, and gives a de- 
tailed account of it on three several occasions. We gather 
from his own statement that he was fixed in his purpose to 
exterminate the rising Christian communities, and that he 
had taken for this end a commission from the high priest, 
and was about to execute it in the capital of Syria. 
There was no faltering in his steps ; he never makes the 
slightest allusion to any doubts he had on his way to 
Damascus. If he had any misgivings at all, they were 



+ 



HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. /O 

too slight to have left any impression whatever on his 
memory. This inward radical change of mind and heart 
was not the result of reflection, but a somewhat sudden 
transformation wrought from without and from above ; 
for no mere reverie, or dream of an hour, or transient 
sentimental relenting in the solitude of his journey, could 
culminate in the complete reversal of the entire cuirent 
of his opinions, convictions, and purposes. The bitterness 
of his hate against the Christians would have fluctuated 
only with the fervor of his persecuting zeal, and that zeal 
would have been as likely to have risen as to have fallen 
as he approached his journey's end. His strong national 
prejudices, and the public position he had taken, as well 
as the commission he had received, could only have served 
to fire his young and ardent nature. How, then, can we 
account for a change so sudden, so thorough, so spiritual. 
and so permanent, reversing all the plans of his past life, 
except by the miraculous call he claims to have received 
on the plains of Damascus ? It cannot, as we have seen, 
be explained as the result of a psychological proce*^ 
wrought by silent communings with his own soul. The 
very question, " Who art thou, Lord ? " as well as kis utter 
silence about any such gradual inward change, shows that 
there was in fact none, — at least none adequate to produce 
such a transformation, and to embody itself in such^a won- 
derful vision. With the noonday splendor in the midst of 
which Jesus appeared to him, a sudden light flashed on 
his soul, and the apostle received at once his call, and ex- 
perienced at once his conversion. This wondrous appear- 
ance could have been no natural phenomenon, which the 
apostle subsequently explained as the personal presence 
of Ciirist, and as a judgment on his course of life. It 



76 BVIDBNCES OF CnillSTIANlTY, 

carried with itself the evidence of its reality. The im« 
pression was immediate, and not subsequent to the event ; 
its character and purpose were bejond question^ confirmed 
as it was bj the simultaneous vision of Ananias. 

We cannot, then, admit for a moment that in these two 
jreat historical events, so central, so fruitful in results, 
and so related to each other, the writers could possibly 
liave been deceived. 

The attempt has been made to take refuge in a mjth, 
and thus escape the absurdities of the older sceptical the- 
ories. 

The general idea of a mjth is plain enough. It is the 
unconscious creation of an age. The individual who first 
begins to embody it only voices the common sentiment of 
the community among whom he lives. He is only a 
nythographer, and not in any proper sense the creator of 
the myth itself; for it is not so much the product of his 
genius, as it is the incarnation of the spirit of his times. 
Whenever an age thus turns its ideas into facts, it is an 
Age of mythology, and its varying creations are so many 
varying myths. 

It do6s not here concern us whether the myth be sup- 
posed to be perfect or partial in its character ; whether 
it be a pure embodiment of a common thought and feeling 
without^any historical basis whatever, or only the group- 
ing of ideal elements about a nucleus of facts ; for if 
the mythical element be the constitutive principle in the 
Gospels, then their historic character is for our purpose as 
truly lost as if this element was the sole factor in the 
product. Either view will not materially afiect our line of 
discussion. But if the historic element is the reigning or 
governing principle of th(} evangelic narrative, then wa 



HISTORICAL CnARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. Ti 

have all that we here claim or need. This last poiut will, 
however, be noticed further in the discussion. 

To the hypothesis of a myth we have the following 
objections : — 

First. The Gospels do not wear a mythical garb. 
Their form and spirit are prosaic rather than poetic. The 
narrative is essentially fixed, and not varying and multi- 
form like the classic stories of the heroes of the Old World. 
It claims, too, to be grounded on testimony, and is addressed 
to the conscience and reason of men, rather than chiefly 
to their aesthetic sentiments and feelings. It has through- 
out a realistic character. The writers not only appeal to 
witnesses, but to older historic documents, and bind their 
narrative in a thousand ways to their own generation. 
Luke has the historic sense as clearly marked as Tacitus 
himself The evangelic record is not a collection of crude 
and grotesque marvels, nor a series of beautiful allegories. 
but a clear statement of facts and discourses from the 
life of our Lord. Its very omissions, where the myth-form- 
ing element, if it had existed, would have been most 
fruitful, as in the infancy and childhood of Jesus, plainly 
reveal its genuine historical character. 

Second. No such ideal as that of Jesus was floating 
in the Jewish mind at that period, seeking expression and 
demanding embodiment. The very reverse was true. 
The Jews were expecting a worldly Redeemer, who should 
come with pomp and power, and should make Jerusalem 
the seat of universal empire. Thus the age stood in open 
and sharp antagonism to the apostolic conception of the 
person and reign of the Messiah. It could not furnish 
materials out of which to form such a character. It could 
only give the narrow asceticism of the Essenes, the strict 

2* 



78 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

legalism of the Pharisees, and the cool scepticism of the 
Sadducees, tainted as they may all have been bj the 
presence of their conquerors, or by the freer manners of 
the Jews of the dispersion. 

Nor can we find such an ideal cherished among the 
simple disciples of Galilee. That these shepherds, living 
far from Jerusalem, and destitute of all the culture of 
the schools, should form and foster such a lofty, harmo- 
nious, and extended myth, and should impose it on the 
early church, and have it supersede completely and 
utterly the facts of history, — that these simple-minded 
followers of Jesus should be able to do all this, — to 
create an ideal transcending in beauty and power the 
conceptions of any age, however creative ; an ideal which 
should take the place of the real in the minds of the 
ipostles, and become the very foundation of the Christian 
Church, and embody itself in all their doxologies, hymns, 
and symbolic rites, — to suppose that these disciples should 
have been able to do all this, is to carry the incredulity 
of unbelief to the farthest point of extravagance. 

Third. The period of a third of a century is far too 
short to create either a pure or an impure myth. It 
requires centuries for an age to give expression to its gov- 
erning ideas. It can only thus embody and express the 
reigning sentiments and dogmas of the popular belief. 
Now, the character of Jesus, whether ideal or real, must 
have been formed and accepted within some thirty years 
after his death. This is apparent from the well-known 
paragraph in the history of Tacitus. We quote what 
bears on the case. " Nero accused a set of men . . . 
called Christians. The author of this sect was Christ, who 
in the reign of Tiberius suffered death by Pontius Pilate. 



BISTORICAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 79 

This vile superstition broke out, not only in Judea, the 
nest of the mischief, but in the city [Rome]. ... A 
vast multitude were condemned, not so much for burning the 
city as for enmity to mankind. . . . Some were torn to 
pieces ; some were crucified .... some burned to 
death, and set up as lights in the night-time." Now, 
within the short period indicated by the Roman historian, 
the character of Jesus had been formed, and had passed 
from the hills of Judea to the metropolis of the world, 
and had become the comfort and the support of a vast 
multitude. Such was the simple fact. Now, was that 
character mythical or historical, ideal or real? If the 
former, then all confidence in historical criticism is gone, 
and it ceases to be an instrument in the discovery of truth. 
But the birth and the growth of so pure and so lofty, so 
extended and so fruitful, a myth, in so short a period, are 
simply inconceivable. 

We may go still further, and safely affirm that the 
great supernatural events in the life of Jesus were gener- 
ally accepted before the conversion of Paul. For there 
are no critics of any respectability, or of any school what- 
ever, but admit the genuineness of the four larger Epistles 
of Paul, namely, Romans, the two Corinthians, and Gala- 
tians. Now, these letters show clearly that Paul accepted 
from the first the fact of a crucified and risen Saviour, 
and show, too, that his faith was the common belief of all 
the churches. If, then, the Christ of the church was a 
myth, that myth must have arisen within eight years from 
the death of our Lord. The statement of the view is 
the only refutation which it needs. 

Fourth. The age was one of general enlightenment, 
and so fatal to the origin, growth, and sway of any great 



80 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

myth, or series of myths. It was a historical period, 
and did not possess that atmosphere in which the creations 
of a common fancy come into being and life. It is true^ 
isolated legends — the offspring of individual minds, and 
having a limited range — are quite probable, but not myths. 
Nor can we make the Jewish community an exception to 
the general character of that period. They were an 
educated people. They had their scribes and their schools 
and their literature; their temple worship, their syna- 
gogues, and their Sanhedrim. They had, too, constant 
intercourse with the Greeks and the Romans. The great 
caravan routes between Egypt and Syria went through or 
touched the borders of their country. The great festivals 
dispelled ignorance from even the inhabitants of the rural 
districts. In that period Israel was a historic nation, with 
great memories and great hopes. The general intelligence 
of the apostolic age, then, precludes the rise of any gen • 
eral myths. 

Fifth. The defenders of the mythical theory have 
based their view in part on the alleged irreconcilable oppo- 
sition between the synoptics and John. But, if this is so, 
both cannot be mythical narratives. One must be his- 
torical to justify an assumed contradiction. Now, which- 
ever one is historical, that one gives us a historical 
Chilst. The master of Strauss saw this difficulty, and so 
rejected his pupil's theory. 

The legendary theory has had its advocates, and so 
demands a brief consideration. If the historical element 
is only incidental, then the narrative is, as a whole, a 
fiction, and is to be examined as in the light of the facts 
it ignores and the difficulties it creates. These facts and 
difficulties we have already considered. If, however, the 



BISTORTCAL CHARACTER OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 81 

historical element is central, pervading, and controlling, 
then it is for the supporter of such a theory to point out 
and eliminate the legendary elements. For apologetic 
purposes we have all we need. As the narrative is 
essentially historic, so we have a real historical personage 
in Jesus Christ. We only remark, that biblical criticism 
will admit of no such legendary excrescences in the sacred 
narrative. One thing has been forgotten by some of 
these sceptics, that is, that they, too, are bound to be self- 
consistent. They cannot at the same time maintain con- 
tradictory hypotheses. — (See chap, ii., sec. 4.) 

A recent school of doubt has applied a novel theory of 
development to the origin and growth of the New-Testa- 
ment canon. According to this theory, the Christian 
Church contained from the first two opposing parties, — 
the Jewish Christian and the Gentile Christian. These 
w^ere headed respectively by Peter and Paul. The apos- 
tles and their adherents wrote from purely polemic mo- 
tives. Paul begins with his larger Epistles ; and his 
adherents at a later day follow him, in order to set forth 
the Pauline conception of Christianity ; and some follower 
of Peter gives Matthew and other documents of a Petrin^ 
tendency ; and some unknown genius closes with the Gos- 
pel of John, in which he endeavors to conciliate both 
factions. But no such antagonism existed in the ancient 
church. There was an essential agreement among the 
apostles. The reading of the Gospels and Epistles can- 
not make on the unprejudiced mind the impression that the 
authors of these works were polemic theologians. Nor 
can the New Testament be thus broken up into discon- 
nected and opposing fragments. The fact, that the great 
body of learned critics, as well as of believing men and 



82 EVIDENCES ( F CHRISTIANITY. 

women of all ages, have seen and felt the unity T^hich 
l^ervades the whole collection, is a fact which overrides 
the arbitrary judgment of any narrow and isolated school 
Avhatever. It is the case of Baur versus History before 
the bar of criticism. Every new trial foreshadows all 
the more certainly the ultimate condemnation of the 
theory. It is possible to build a pyramid on its apex, 
creditable to one's constructive genius ; but to make it 
stand the shocks of time exceeds all human power. This 
hypothesis, though it has little to support it, and so much to 
oppose it, yet, by admitting the genuineness of the leading 
Pauline Epistles, by the searching and exhaustive criti- 
cism which its advocates have given to the literature of 
the early centuries, has indirectly contributed to the mak- 
ing more evident the genuineness and authenticity of the 
entire New Testament. 

There has been an effort to give up the supernatural 
and retain the natural in the history of Jesus. But the 
miraculous element cannot be eliminated from the Gos- 
pels or Epistles. Miracles do not form a patchwork on 
the surface of the record, nor a beautiful embroidery 
which may be easily detached from the main fabric. They 
are woven into that fabric, and give to it its peculiar value. 
They often grow out of the events recorded, and naturally 
suggest the sayings and discourses of our Lord. Take 
them away, and the narrative becomes a disjointed writing, 
without order, coherency, or meaning, and the very warrant 
for what remains is lost. The presence of the supernatural 
is recognized in the apostolic Epistles, and the Church has 
for eighteen centuries builded its faith not on what is nat- 
ural, but on what is supernatural, in the character and 
work of Christ. 



niSTOIilCAL CnARACTEIi OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 83 

We conclude, then, that none of the sceptical theories 
ireaken in the least the force of the evidence, external 
and internal, for the historical character of the New Tes- 
tament. In fact, when we find that no other hypothesis 
than the one we have defended can account for the origin 
and character of these writings, we have a strong evidence 
of its historic trustworthiness. 



CHAPTEE II. 

CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 

SECTION FIRST, 

THE IDEA OF THE SUPERNATURAL. 

Nature, as the word denotes, is that which is boiiij 
evolved, developed. A natural event is, then, any link in 
a chain of dependent causes and effects. It is a part of 
the established order of creation. It is God's fixed mode 
of procedure in the sphere to which it belongs. It thus 
indicates and expresses the immanent presence and energy 
of the creative power. 

The supernatural is the transcendent act of God in the 
realm of matter or of mind. It is the effect of an imme- 
diate divine efficiency, appearing at the beginning of an 
ordained order of phenomena, or somewhere along its con- 
tinuous progress. It indicates and expresses the trans- 
cendence of the creative power. 

The supernatural and the natural are both the effects of 

one and the same supreme will. Both make up the one 

unchangeable plan and method of the Almighty. Both 

are essential to a universe. For the beginning of every 

cycle of creation is an instance of the supernatural, and 

its continuance is an example of the natural. In the one 

3ase we have the transcendence of God, and in the other 

his immanence. Thus there is no change in the ordained 

84 



CBRI8T1ANJTT A SUPERNATURAL FACT, 85 

plan of the Almighty. The supernatural is not an after- 
thought in the divine mind, nor is it a makeshift to 
meet some emergency in the divine government. Nature is 
not interrupted, but advanced ; not defeated, but crowned 
with victory. Thus, when a new species is introduced, 
the idea embodied in the larger class to which it belongs 
finds a fuller and clearer expression in this new creation. 
It is the fulfilment of a prophecy. Thus, too, the intent 
of nature, defeated for a time by the lawlessness of sin, is 
secured by an intervention foreseen and provided for in the 
economy of the divine government. Thus the natural 
rests on and culminates in the supernatural. Thus the 
plan and method of God is one and unchangeable. 

The idea of the supernatural as an intervention in the 
order of nature, without being out of place in the economy 
of the universe, is analogous to the common experience of 
life. There is a subordination in the laws under which we 
live. Thus the laws of chemical affinity yield to those of 
organic life. They are held in suspense so long as the 
vital functions endure, and when these cease the animal 
falls under the dominion of these lower laws, and decom- 
position ensues. Again, the physical yields to the psychi- 
cal, as when the force of the will transcends for a time the 
force of gravity. Each of these agencies is supreme until 
a higher one takes the case from under its jurisdiction. 
The analogy is striking in this fact, namely, that the one 
subordinating force is a personal will, spiritual in its nature, 
sovereign in its sphere, and moving from its own centre to 
its own moral and rational goal. Thus it is not incredible 
that the supreme will may subordinate the forces of the 
universe to its own spiritual ends, whenever and wherever 
these enda are to be reached by such a subordination. Ita 
8 



86 EVIVEI^CES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

single volitions only yield to its superior, dominant choice. 
The divine mind, which manifests itself in a series of con- 
nected volitions, may centre its power and reveal its tran- 
scendence in some regnant act of the will, whenever and 
wherever the foreseen crisis may arise. The immutahility 
of God even justifies this view, and thus the idea of the 
supernatural is altogether a rational conception. 

The miraculous differs from the supernatural as a spe- 
cies differs from the genus to which it belongs. A miracle 
is wrought within the sphere of physical phenomena alone, 
and always through the instrumentality of man. Thus the 
resurrection of Christ was a supernatural event, while the 
raising of Lazarus from the dead was a miraculous oc- 
currence. Thus, again, the inspiration of the apostle was 
supernatural, while the woe he pronounced on Elymas was 
miraculous. The wonder-worker appeals to the immediate 
power of God to make potential the impotency of his own 
agency. 

How far any event is miraculous depends on how fer it 
is the sole effect of the immediate efficiency of God. 

We are thus able to distinguish our conception of a 
miracle from our notion of a prodigy, or from our idea of 
the monstrous. Both of these last are anomalies, but 
anomalies to be explained by the established laws of na- 
ture. One of them is a mere departure from the usual 
course of things, and the other is a simple defeat of the 
asual ends of nature herself. But yet both fall under the 
domain of science, and both are wanting in any express or 
implied moral purpose whatever, except that one of them 
is the penalty for violating some organic law of our being. 
Both, too, are independent of the conscious instrumental- 
ity of man. Now, the miracle can never be explained by 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 87 

science, and must always have some spiritual end in view, 
more or less fully apprehended bj the wonder-worker. 

The idea of the supernatural and the miraculous an- 
swers at once the objection that a miracle is an impossibil- 
ity. It is affirmed that the course of nature is unalterable, 
and so of course allows of no violation or variation. But, 
by the term nature, the objector must mean the one scheme 
of the universe, — the one great realm of order and har- 
mony. But this one scheme may cover, as we have seen, 
both the immanence and transcendence of God, — both 
his ordinary mode of procedure and his extraordinary acts 
of efficiency. Both methods of operation are not only 
harmonious, but also invariable. The principles which 
govern the divine mind in its interventions are as immuta- 
ble as those which sway that mind in its ordinary agency. 
There is no change in the divine plan, no departure from 
the divine order ; for a miracle is a part of the original 
system of the universe. Besides, a violation of any law 
of nature can take place only when a different effect fol- 
lows from the same cause, and a different end is proposed 
under the same circumstances. But, in the case of the su- 
pernatural, God himself is the immediate efficient cause. 
Even Huxley, as quoted by the Duke of Argyll, declares 
that " to deny the possibility of miracles seems to me quite 
as unjustifiable as speculative atheism." 

It has also been objected that no testimony can sub- 
stantiate a miracle. Our experience shows, it is said, 
that nature is uniform, and that human testimony is more 
or less unreliable. We might reply, this narrows ex- 
perience, on the one hand, to the observation of the 
individual ; on the other hand, it reduces all testimony to 
the same level. But, waiving this formal and technical 



88 EVIDENCES OF CHRiSTlANITT. 

reply to Hume, we may place our answer on a broader 
basis. If the supernatural is not in itself improbable, 
then the testimony of honest and competent witnesses 
is altogether adequate to prove a miraculous event. Now. 
when we remember that God is a personal being, and so 
above nature and not of it, and when we reflect that 
there may arise occasions, foreseen and provided for in the 
divine plan, on which God will interfere to secure the 
great moral ends of his government, there can be no 
presumption whatever against the occurrence of the 
miraculous ; and so the testimony of competent witnesses 
is as valid here as in any ordinary court of justice. The 
objection is in fact atheistic. 

It is further objected that testimony can only prove the 
occurrence of the event, but not the miraculousness of it ; 
that it can only give us the fact, but not its cause. But 
the witnesses do testify, not to some marvellous occurrence 
without any known moral purpose, but to a change ex- 
ceeding the laws of nature, wrought by man's instru- 
mentality, and that, too, with some worthy moral end in 
view. The wonder-worker refers the change thus wrought 
to God himself, and claims it as a proof of his divine 
commission. Now, that claim is at once admitted by the 
common judgment of mankind. The idea of some un- 
known law of nature, such, for example, as the law of 
resurrection, is everywhere repudiated. To suppose that 
the early disciples were acquainted with such a law, and 
able to avail themselves of it at pleasure, is to attribute to 
them a superhuman knowledge, which they never olaim, 
— is to attribute to them one form of the miraculous at 
the expense of another. Thus, though it be true that 
testimony can only vouch dirsctly for the fact, yet, when 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 89 

the fact has been substantiated, we are able in most cases 
to decide at once whether it is natural or miraculous. 

A recent writer has insisted that this last question 
ought to be left to a board of learned naturalists. But 
it is to be remembered that a miracle is not a scientific fact, 
— a fact determined by experiment: but an obvious historic 
fact, addressing the senses of the beholders, and falling 
within the range of their ordinary powers of observation. 
Its value lies in its direct appeal to the common mind. 
If it does not in all fairness carry their judgments, and 
satisfy them beyond all honest doubt that it does tran- 
scend the course of nature, then it has no evidential weight 
whatever. 

But, finally, it has been urged that the apologist makes 
the miracle a proof of the doctrine, and then the doctrine 
a proof of the miracle, and thus reasons in a circle. We 
answer, there is no need at all of this fallacious mode of 
treating the subject. The miracle, in its evidential aspect, 
accredits the messenger, and not directly and immediately 
his doctrine : and the doctrine, in just so far as it com- 
mends itself to the human reason and the human con- 
science, has an independent authority, a weight of evi- 
dence all its own. They are both the credentials of the 
teacher claiming to be sent by God: just as the seal 
of state and the letter of instructions both accredit the 
new minister at a foreign court. 

It is here to be noted, that one must judge of any given 
cycle of miracles as a whole, and also of the entire system 
of doctrines with which it is bound up, in its totality, in 
order to appreciate the full force of their united evidence. 
The central miracles and the central truths, and not those 
nearer the circumference, are to engage our chief atten- 



90 BVIDBNCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tioii. Any other method of treatment would he unphilo 
sophic in its character, as it would he dangeious in its 
results. The process, then, of severing the minor Chris- 
tian miracles from the grand cycle to which they belong, 
and the habit of comparing them with the spurious mirr 
acles of notorious pretenders, with a view of weakening 
the legitimacy of the idea of the supernatural, is in the 
highest degree disingenuous. Whatever may be said of the 
motives of the sceptics, this method of attack is simply 
dishonest. 

If there are cases, as there doubtless may be, whose 
miraculous character is doubtful, they are unimpor- 
tant as vouchers for the divine mission of the religious 
teacher. The uncertainty which thus hangs over their 
evidential value is only a part, and a very small part too, 
of that general uncertainty which belongs to our pro- 
bation. 

We conclude, then, that, notwithstanding all these ob- 
jections, the supernatural, as revealing the mind of God, 
and as giving evidence of that revelation, is in itself by 
no means incredible. 

We have here considered the supernatural as giving the 
proof of a revelation, rather than as containing the sub- 
stance of the revelation itself This point will, however, 
recur in the closing section of this chapter. 



SECTION SECOND. 

THE FACT OP THE SUPERNATURAL. 

If God is a personal being, a free and sovereign will, 
then the idea of the supernatural ip, as we have seen, alto- 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT, 91 

getlier legitimate. We have here to consider whether the 
past testifies to any supernatural agency. Now, the an- 
cient strata of the earth contain a record of a presence 
and a power far transcending all the known forces of 
nature. There have been numerous beginnings, possi- 
bly great catastrophes and as great interventions, in past 
geological periods. Thus Dana, in his work on Geology, 
says, " At the close of long periods and epochs, there 
were nearly universal extinctions followed by creations." 
Corbigne, a recent French naturalist, in his treatise on 
Paleontology, says, ' ' Twenty-seven times have distinct 
creations repeopled all the earth with plants and animals, 
following each time some geological disturbance which had 
totally destroyed living nature." Professor Hall, an emi- 
aent living geologist, says, "Of the succession and coming 
m of new species we have everywhere the most palpable 
evidence.'* Dr. Hitchcock affirms that " We may set it 
down as one of the established facts in Paleontology that 
the earth has several times changed its inhabitants — as 
many as six times at least — so entirely that, with the 
exception of the tertiary and alluvial, not a species is 
common to two adjoining groups ; and as many as twenty- 
five times have the faunas and floras been so distinct as 
to prove their origin equally distinct.'' 

It is not important for our purpose whether these great 
changes were sudden or gradual. We may even believe, 
in a creation by evolution, and affirm a supernatural 
growth. For the mode in which the creative energy oper- 
ates is a matter of speculation. All we need in this con- 
nection to insist on is, that new living organisms came into 
being by a creative process transcending all the force of 
nature. 



92 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

An attempt has been made to avoid the force of the tes- 
timony of science, bj the hypothesis of a simple develop- 
ment. On this point let us listen to Agassiz. In his 
essay on Classification he says, " Nothing furnishes the 
slightest argument in favor of the mutability of the spe- 
cies. On the contrary, every modern investigation has 
only gone to confirm the results first obtained by Cuvier, 
that 'species are fixed.'" Dr. Hitchcock remarks, "If 
the doctrine of transmutation of species be true, we 
ought to find ten thousand intermediate formations." Even 
Darwin, of the opposite school, admits that all eminent 
paleontologists, Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz, Barrande, Falconer, 
Forbes, and our greatest geologists, Lyell,* Murchison, 
Sedgewick, etc., have unanimously, often vehemently^ main- 
tained the immutability of species. He freely acknowl- 
edges the difficulties which press on his own theory. Thus, 
he writes, ''To the question why we do not find records 
of these vast providential periods, I can give no satisfactory 
answer." Professor Huxley, in his address before the 
British Association, while favoring a transmutation theory, 
forcibly states the objection. We quote at length : " Much 
observation must be made, and much evidence accumulated , 
before we can see our way to a theory of transmutation of 
species. The only valid, though cardinal, objection to 
such a theory is the want of evidence that a change of 
the kind inferred really takes place, and so little proof of 
it is forthcoming, in spite of the attention which has for 
many years been anxiously directed to the subject. The 
nearly allied species tantalize, by a certain flexibility of 
type, and by their approach to one another, but they seem 
rigidly to abstain from the boundary lines, and the varia' 

* In the tenth edition of his " Geology," however, he inclines to the theorji 
vf Darwin. 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 93 

tioiis that take place seem to have no special reference to 
an approximation to those lines, but rather to a certain 
power of accommodation to external circumstances, necessary 
to a preservation of the species. Between the lowest of 
the human species and the highest of the monkey, there is 
a gap, the width of which will be estimated differently by 
different persons, but so wide that there has never yet been 
any doubt to which side any specimen should be referred. 
jSTow, if the one has been transmitted from the other, how 
comes it that the series has been broken and the connect- 
ing link ceased to exist ? 

" We may wonder not only that the traces of species in 
past time are not forthcoming, but that the species are 
not now living. Moreover, we do not know that any con- 
''.eivable conditions operating through an?/ number of years 
Nill bring the gorilla or the chimpanzee one whit nearer 
to man. Though artificial selection may do much to mod- 
ify species, it is rather by producing varieties than by 
drawing away very far from the original stock. To the 
former there seems to be no limit, but the latter is stopped 
by the increasing unproductiveness and the unhealthiness 
of the individuals, by their susceptibility to disease, and 
by the tendency to revert to the original type. So that 
increasing departure requires increasing care, and we do 
not know that any amount of care and of time would be 
sufficient to produce what might fairly be called a new 
species. The bringing about of any marked change by 
natural selection is shown to be very hard of proof, and 
has opposed to its probability the fact that members of a 
species that are most unlike have the greatest tendency to 
pair off, and are the most fertile, so that we have, in addi- 
tion to the ready reversion of modified breeds to the origi« 
nal stock, a law by which the growth or perpetuation of 



94 EVIDENCE li. OF C/lItlSTTANITT, 

peculiarities is prevented, and a constancy given to the 
character of species. This law is the more striking, from 
its contrast with the law which exists in the pairing of 
different species, and in the infertility of hybrids. Within 
a given range, dissimilarity promotes fertility ; beyond 
that range it is incompatible with it." 

The tendency to variations is constantly met by a ten- 
dency to reversion. Here, too, actions and reactions are 
equal. The greater the departure from the normal type, 
the greater is the tendency to return. Even the hand of 
man cannot prevent the operation of this great law. The 
moment he withdraws his care all the variations beo;in to 
disappear. They are never fundamental in their character. 
And any chance variation, springing up by virtue of ' ' nat- 
ural selection," would be sure to be lost in the very 
stream of life to which it belongs. It could no more create 
a new species than the casual spray thrown on the banks 
of the river could originate a new and rival current. The 
great lesson of nature is that the law of constancy subordi- 
nates, the law of change. 

The Duke of Argyll, in an article already quoted from, 
remarks : " It is true that this record, the geological rec- 
ord, is imperfect. But, as Sir R. Murchison has long since 
proved, there are parts of that record which are singularly 
complete, and in those parts we have the proofs of creation 
without any indications of development. The Silurian 
rocks, as regards oceanic life, are perfect, and abound in 
the forms they have preserved ; yet there are no fish. The 
Devonian age followed tranquilly, and without a break ; 
and in the Devonian sea suddenly fish appear, — appear in 
shoals, and in forms of the highest and most perfect type. 
There is no trace of links or transitional forms between 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT, 95 

the great class of mollusca and the great class of fishes. 
There is no reason whatever to suppose that any such 
forms, if thej had existed, can have been destroyed in 
deposits, which have preserved in wonderful perfection the 
minutest organism." 

ft is not, then, science which supports the theory of the 
transmutation of species, but speculation. The remark of 
Owen, the prince of English naturalists, is worthy of note 
" Observation of the effects of any of the above hypothet- 
ical transmuting influences in changing any known species 
has not been recorded. And past experience of the chance 
aims of human fancy, unchecked and unguarded by observed 
facts, shows how Avidely they have ever glanced away from 
the golden centre of truth." 

Besides, this theory of development, even if it should 
be verified by the discoveries of M. Gaiidry and others 
not only admits, but necessitates, a beginning. Darwin 
says, " I should infer that probably all the organic beings 
which have ever lived on this earth have descended fron 
some one primordial form, into which life was first breathe^'^ 
by the Creator. ' ' Now, this extreme hypothesis requires th^ 
very highest exercise of creative power, since the original 
primordial form must contain within itself the germinal ele- 
ments of ail the organisms which have filled the earth, or 
shall have filled it at the end of its existence. It must gather 
in itself the minimum and the maximum of all living ter- 
restrial forms. Thus this fancy by which the butterfly 
ind the elephant are both potentially centred in a common 
ancestor, while it distances the divine agency, yet renders 
that agency all the more intense and wonderful. It is 
valuable as showing that speculation cannot eliminate God 
from the universe, but is forced to make the super 



96 EVIDEKCKS OP CHRISTIAKITY, 

natural the starting-point and the basis of tlie natural 
itself. 

Now, there has, no doubt, been a general progress, at 
least within and along the line of great plans of organic 
structure and life. Thus, in the history of the vertebrata, 
we have the reign of fishes, of reptiles, of mammals, and, 
lastly, of man. There is an advance, but no purely simple 
and natural development. One species does not by a nat- 
ural process grow out of another, and wholly different, 
order of animals. The order of advance is not uniform 
and continuous by virtue of inherent forces and outward 
circumstances alone, but by progressive steps through a 
supernatural agency. How far that agency may avail 
itself of established and allied agencies of nature we know 
not. That God should thus avail himself of his own 
ordained forces is but in harmony with the divine econ- 
omy. God begins where he left off. New and higher 
forms of life, following, however, the general type to which 
they belong, are continually showing themselves as we 
proceed from the oldest strata to our present existing 
organisms. We conclude, then, that science is ever lead- 
ing us into the presence of the supernatural, and ever 
demonstrating that it is an essential part of the economy 
of the universe. 

SECTION THIBD. 

THE NEED OP THE SUPERNATURAL. 

The supernatural is not merely the regalia of Jehovah, 
or the simple credentials of his messengers, nor is it the ac- 
companiment of revelation, but the sum and substance of the 
revelation itself. The divine message must be both miracu- 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 97 

lous and prophetic ; for only in this way could God re-enter 
the order of nature or the realm of human history. The 
one involveti the other, and both reveal God as transcend- 
ing his own creation. The Christian theist must insist 
not merely on the possibility, or on the utility, of the su- 
pernatural, but also on its necessity. 

Nature does most certainly reveal a religion of her own. 
It is the religion of experience grounded on the dictates 
of conscience and of reason. It makes man responsible for 
his character, his belief, and his conduct. But it does not 
satisfy the aspirations which it awakens, nor does it answer 
the inquiries which it calls forth. Man, sinless though 
he be, cannot find rest in its teachings. 

He must enter within the veil, and so come into the 
sensible presence of his Maker ; or God must lift that veil, 
and present himself before the creature; or, what is far 
more probable, the second alternative must be a prelude to 
the first. 

For, if God should meet us only at the close of this life, 
we should then need a prophetic assurance of the fact, in 
order to make the day of our departure a day of jubilee, 
a season of festive joy. But, even in this case, life could 
only become great as we left it. We should expect then 
not only a voice from out of the silence of the infinite, but 
also a flash from out of its impenetrable darkness. God's 
great welcome at the goal of life would thus have been 
preceded by many a visit of his love and of his power. 
These manifestations would transcend nature, and lay the 
foundation of infinite hopes. 

No system of instruction, based on nature, and springing 

from natural gifts, could supersede the necessity of this 

intervention. Man could not rise above his condition. 
9 



98 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT, 

Science could not enter at all the spiritual world, and 
philosophy could only conjecture, where man needed, most 
of all, assurance and certitude. 

There would be need of other and higher elements, 
d^hese could come only from a supernatural source. The 
communication, too, must be through objective media. 
The revelation must be based on new and transcendent 
facts, or the inspired prophet must himself incarnate the 
truths he proclaims. In some way the revelation must be 
more than verbal, else it will not answer the needs of our 
nature. For we are made to apprehend spiritual truths by 
sensible symbols, and we can only lay hold of absolutely 
new truths by means of new symbols. 

It is only the deed-acts of God, and his veritable pres- 
ence made evident to our senses, that can satisfy the de- 
mands of man even in a state of innocency. Any higher 
instruction, based alone on the course of nature and of 
life, would lose its realistic character ; it would be but a 
dead nominalism, or at most a sublime idealism having 
only an artistic value. 

The fact of the incarnation need not address immedi- 
ately the senses of every man. All that is needed here is 
that it should enter permanently into human history, and 
that credible evidence of that entrance should reach all 
men. The life of Christ must incarnate itself in a new 
society, — the Christian church. The new revelation 
must be historical. 

If it be said that man as a sinless being, in a sinless 
world, could have no conscious need of a revelation, — 
that his life could move on to his goal, — we reply that this 
very supposition would show his need of special help in 
order to lift his soul up to a higher plane of living. For 



CBRISTIANITT A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 99 

such a life might have the sweetness of innocencj, but it 
could not have the nobility of high and holy endeavor 
A moral law, resting on the will of Jehovah, must rouse 
his moral nature, and turn his spontaneous love of the 
good into a free, conscious choice of the right. 

The degradation of man, radical and universal as it is, 
demands a special divine intervention. His moral and 
intellectual vision has been obscured, and he fails to learn 
the full lesson which even nature was designed to teach. 
Besides, he has taken a new attitude and a new position. 
He is now a sinner, as well as a creature of God. He 
finds himself entangled in new difficulties, and borne along 
to a dread goal by an irresistible current. He can find no 
escape. Nature has thrown no light on his prospects. 
If she teaches anything, it is utter and blank despair. 

Man must have divine help. In his fallen condition he 
needs new truths, new springs of action, and a new divine 
life. All these can be embodied only in a supernatural 
revelation. 

The history of all the great nations of the world testifies 
to the insufficiency of the light of nature. Races have 
followed their tendencies. Each has had its peculiar civ- 
ilization, and has worked at the moral problems of life, 
and each has signally failed in practically solving them. 
They have given us stray truths, but embedded in great 
superstitions. None of them have found out any proper 
remedy for human ills. Their loftiest utterances lack the 
air of reality and the tone of authority. 

The most gifted souls of the Old World do not stand out 
to us as discoverers, — hardly as reformers. Without the 
power to adjust the relations of man to his Maker, with- 
out certainty, and often without conviction in their teach* 



100 EriDENCRS; OF CHRISTTANITY. 

ings, and without any grand motives to offer, or any ne"W 
life to impart; what could they do for a lost humanity? 

The only, solitary exception among the nations of the 
earth has been the Jews. They did not work out the re- 
ligion in and by which they lived. We see very clearly 
that the natural tendency of the Jewish mind was to 
forms of idolatry kindred to those held by their neighbors. 
Their religious ideas and institutions had been given them 
from without and from above. They were grounded on 
revelation. 

It is not safe to aflSrm a priori how God would reveal 
liimself Reason must follow, and not precede, revelation. 
Taking this rule for our guidance, we are able to see a 
wisdom in God's adapting his revelations to different de- 
grees of natural culture. There was the need of just that 
form of the supernatural which is best suited to the com- 
prehension of the age to which it is addressed. A rude 
and sensuous people must be approached in symbols, natu- 
ral or supernatural, which they can comprehend. 

Our general view of the need of the supernatural is 
rejected by the deist, the naturalist, the rationalist, the 
pantheist, and the positivist. The attitude of these sceptics 
towards Christianity is essentially the same. But their 
mode of treating revealed religion is different, and demands 
a brief notice. 

The deist recognizes God both as separate and as sep- 
arated from the world. God does not concern himself with 
the race either in a natural or supernatural manner. 
The course of nature and of providence moves on without 
his presence or agency. Now. this system is shallow in 
the extreme, for a universe absolutely dependent on God 
for its origin must be equally dependent on him for ita 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 101 

continuance. In fact, this mode of thinking has become 
quite obsolete in the higher schools of doubt. 

The naturalist advances a step further, and gives us a 
God enclosed in the mechanism of his own law. and mani- 
fest alone in and by the agencies and forces of nature and 
of life. With him the truths gathered by our common 
experiences and by our ordinary inductions are the sole 
truths of religion. Man needs no more. But the general 
consciousness of the race protests against any such theory, 
and that protest is its condemnation. For it has far more 
authority before the bar of human reason, than the mere 
speculation of any human thinker whatever. 

The rationalist takes a different standpoint. He makes 
the human reason the supreme judge and source of all the 
higher truths of religion and of morality. Doubtless rea- 
son has its rights, but the case is beyond its jurisdiction 
It can never accept what is repugnant to its clear and 
settled and uniform intuitions. But the supernatural i** 
never a simple abstract proposition, but a transcendent fact 
in nature or in life, — a deed-act of God. The reason 
cannot by its own light pronounce on the credibility and 
worth of the miraculous facts of Christianity. It can ex- 
clude only what no one admits. Their credibility must 
rest essentially on testimony. The interpretation of these 
facts may give us doctrines which loom up above our rea- 
son. Now, in such cases, the court must declare itself in- 
competent to pronounce a decision. Any other principle 
would exclude the grandest verities from our faith, and 
justify the old heathen postulate that man was the measure 
of the universe. 

It does, as we have before remarked, belong to the hu- 
man reason to follow revelation, and not precede and pre' 

9* 



102 EVIDENCES DF CHIIISTIANITT, 

(ietermine. It is for her either to solve the problems of 

revelation, or to submit to its mysteries. 

The pantheist gives the theory on which both the nat- 
uralist and the rationalist would seek to justify them- 
selves. It identifies God with the growing consciousness 
of humanity. 

But if our selfhood is an independent verity, it is not 
one and the same with the selfhood of God. If we are 
persons distinct and separate, then God must be free and 
personal also. At least his identity with the soul is pre- 
cluded. The sense of personal sovereignty in the Saxon 
mind is strongly expressed in the use of the capital letter 
/, when it stands alone, or of that single letter crowned, 
whenever it stands among its fellows. It is also to be 
jioted that our deepest and most abiding moral convictions, 
ds well as our loftiest aspirations, are at war with this 
theory; for with it perishes the validity of all our 
ideas of sin and of guilt. These become our idle and su- 
perstitious fears. In fact, all the notions we have of right 
and wrong, of virtue and vice, are purely subjective with- 
out any basis in the eternal order of Providence. Our 
longings for a personal communion with God are only the 
morbid cravings of our diseased souls. All the truth 
there is in the pantheistic theory is gathered up in the 
Christian idea of absolute dependence on God. 

The positivist closes the development of the anti-su- 
pernaturalistic tendency. His position is negative. He 
simply affirms that the supernatural is unknown and un- 
knowable. He declares that we have to do solely with 
the phenomenal, and that all spiritual and transcendental 
causes are the purest fancies ir the world. Now it does 
«eom to be a broad and patent fact, that we have intellectual 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. lOS 

instincts which are not at all met and satisfied by the bare 

study of phenomena. It is natural for man to look beyond 
what is presented merely to the senses, aided or unaided by 
science. His craving after the unknown does not belong 
to the immaturity of youth, nor is it due to an ignorant 
and unbalanced mind. It is altogether natural and legiti- 
mate. This positivism itself is ever assuming what it ig- 
nores. It has on its own principles no right to accept, as 
an established doctrine of science, the law of cause and 
effect, or a dogma of the immutability of nature. It ought 
in all consistency to admit the facts of life and of history, 
which are fairly attested by the senses, whether they be 
natural or supernatural. 

It may be true that we have first a theological age, and 
then a metaphysical period, and lastly a scientific epoch. 
But this order only shows that the spiritual instincts, being 
most central, are first awakened ; and that then the ra- 
tional habits of the mind are called forth, and that last of 
all the more patient and laborious methods of scientific 
inquiry come into play. But in this development the 
spiritual and rational elements of our nature are never 
even partially outgrown except at the expense of our hu- 
manity. They only take a truer and wider sweep along 
the opening paths of science itself. A glance at the dis- 
coveries of Goethe and Oken is a refutation of the idea 
that the scientific spirit has left behind the sphere of met- 
aphysics ; and the position of theological studies shows 
what rich contributions science has already made to her 
domain. We might as well affirm that, as art precedes 
science in the historical development, therefore it is 
to be discarded in the progress of science itself The 
truth is, whatever rests on the native instincts and intui- 



104 EVIDENCES OF CnniSTIANlTY. 

tions of Lumanity. whether it belongs to the sphere of 
aesthetics, or of religion, or of philosophy, must first ap- 
pear in the progress of society, ere science can claim a 
large share of human attention. Any other view is con- 
trary to reason and to history. 

Comte's latest speculations only show how impossible 
it is to set aside the claims of religion. He would ignore 
the supernatural ; but he must have something to worship, 
and so he idealizes humanitv, and bows down to the idol 
of his own fancy. But it is humanity realized, — human- 
ity assumed, — the God-man who alone can answer the 
cry of the race. 

The secularism which prevails in England is only pos- 
itivism applied to the practical duties of life. If it could 
be carried out, we should have at best a Chinese civiliza- 
tion, void of great hopes or fears or aspirations, and inca- 
pable of great sacrifices, and sure to end in the grossest 
materialism. 

We may say, then, in conclusion, that the longings of 
man pronounced in so many ways and through so long pe- 
riods, the futility of his efforts to extricate himself from 
his condition, and his inherent wants, both as a creature 
and as a sinner, all demonstrate the need of the supernat- 
ural, and so the necessity of a revelation. 



SECTION FOUBTH, 

THE SUPERNATURAL IN CHRTSTIANITT. 

Natural religion has its support in the common facts of 
nature and of life. Revealed religion is grounded on super- 
natural facts and verities. Thus, as we have shown in the 



CBRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 105 

last section, all revelation is, and must be, miraculous 
The form which this supernatural element will take on de- 
pends on the accidents of time, place, and occasion ; while 
the supernatural itself is the essential characteristic of all 
revelation, — its essence, as well as its evidence. Christi- 
anity is gathered and centred in the incarnation of the 
Son of God. Here are found all its germinal principles 
as a life, a doctrine, an ethical law, a kingdom, a fulfil- 
ment, and a world power With the reality of this as- 
sumption of our humanity (an assumption which, since 
God is a spiritual being, and not subject to physical meas- 
urements, is by no means incredible), — with the truth of 
this assumption, Christianity stands or falls. 

Jesus himself is the miracle of the ages. He enters 
permanently into the life of humanity. His presence in 
the world is the broadest and the firmest fact in all human 
history. The great Messianic period to which we belong 
opened with his visible presence — the Christ of the past 
it has advanced, and is now advancing, under his invisible 
guidance — the Christ of the present ; and it is to culminate 
with his appearance in glory — the Christ of the future- 
He is a unique and complete cycle of the supernat 
ural. Take away any one of the great epochs in this 
movement, and the entire movement itself loses its inner 
harmony, and can have no place in the moral order of the 
universe. 

We have to do, in this chapter, not with the Christ of 
heaven, or with the Christ of the church, but with the 
Christ of history. Still it is true that they are one and 
the same; for he is, as we have already implied, the 
central and the permanent miracle in the life of hu- 
mauitj. 



106 EVIDENCES OF CnRISTIANlTY. 

All the great events in his earthly career are supernat- 
ural, — the conception, the resurrection, and the ascension. 
No one of them can be given up without impairing the 
completeness of that wonderful, unique life. They mutu- 
ally support each other. Thus we have a supernatural 
Christ, or no Christ at all. The common wonders Jesus 
wrought are but the effulgence of his glory, — sparks of 
light elicited by his contact with suffering humanity. The 
divine power and love flashed forth whenever and wherever 
human helplessness or human misery appealed to the 
sympathy of the one great Wonder-worker. He could not 
but interpose, when disease or death, or any form of human 
want or woe, tacitly or expressly claimed his intervention. 
In all this he was but acting according to the law of his 
aature and the purpose of his mission. Thus every mir- 
.icle was a triumph over the kingdom of evil, from the 
first and humblest one at Cana, to the crowning one at the 
resurrection. 

The redemptive character which stamps all these acts of 
Jesus, so natural to him, but so supernatural to us, will 
appear from the following classification. They may be 
grouped under the following heads : — 

(1.) His power over the conditions of time and space; 
e. ^., the cure of the nobleman's absent son. 

(2.) His dominion over nature. 

(a.) Over the properties of nature ; e. ^., turning water 
into wine. Here was a qualitative change. The irt- 
crease of the loaves and fishes was a quantitative 
change. 

(b.) Over the laws of nature; c. ^., the walking on the 
waters of Galilee, and the stilling of the storm. 

(3.) His dominion over physical evil; e. g., supernat- 



CHRISTIANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 107 

ui*al cures, and the instances of the resurrection of the 
dead. 

(4.) His dominion over psychical evil; e,g.^ the casting 
out of devils. 

(5.) His dominion over his own person, over his own 
destiny, absolute and complete, in which he shapes that 
destiny in the interests of redemption ; e. g., his resurrec- 
tion and ascension. 

The supernatural in Christ, and so in Christianity, shows 
itself in his perfect moral character, as well as in his indi 
vidual acts. He claims to be sinless, and his followers ad- 
mit that claim, and rest their hopes upon it. Now, in this 
unique self-assertion he cannot be deceived ; for, first, he 
had a clear and exalted view of the moral law, the clearest 
and most exalted ever given to mortal. In fact, he was 
pre-eminently a moral and religious Teacher. All this 
tends very strongly to preclude any grave self-deception. 
In the second place, he was accustomed to look at the 
hidden and inward springs of action. Thus his own con- 
sciousness could not well have escaped the searching scru- 
tiny of his own introspection. This, too, would stand in the 
way of any self-imposition. In the third place, it was his 
wont to give himself up to private prayer and to self-reflec- 
tion. This, also, would have opened to himself his own 
spiritual condition. In i\iQ fourth place, he was placed in 
the midst of special and varied trials, in which the latent 
evils of his own heart — if there were any — would have 
been certain to show themselves, at least to himself, if not 
to the world. It was this temptation which converted his 
sinlessness into positive holiness. The very struggle to 
keep the moral law, and to discharge faithfully the high 
trust committed to him, would have stirred the fountain of 



108 EVIDENCES OF CHRTSTIANITT. 

evil in his nature, had any such fountain existed. The 
testimony of Judas, as well as that of Pilate and of the 
apostles, and indeed of men outside of, as well as within, 
the church, shows the general impression made by the 
character of Jesus on his contemporaries. That impres- 
sion has been deepened with every succeeding age. Be- 
sides, does the theory of self-deception accord with the lofti- 
ness of his mission ; does it harmonize with the grounding 
of a church ? Can we construct history on any such hy- 
pothesis ? Should we not be giving up the supra-natural 
for the contra-natural ? 

Shall we say, then, that Jesus was a deceiver ? Here 
we must make our choice between two opposite views. 
We must believe that he was either a miracle of goodness, 
or a marvel of wickedness ; for, if he was a hypocrite, 
his hypocrisy was of the most subtle and insinuating char- 
acter possible, bearing all the marks and having all the 
potency of truth itself. It was, too, a deception in the 
highest and holiest sphere of one's life. It was, then, a 
false coin, but with all the appearance and weight, and 
even value, of the genuine one, and that, too, after having 
been used for many centuries, and after having endured 
not only the popular tests, but the more scientific ones, by 
which the true is distinguished from the false. 

On this supposition, what refinement of wickedness there 
must have been in the character of Jesus ! He assumed to 
be the perfect pattern of holiness, and was received as such 
by those who knew him best. He even claimed to dwell 
in the bosom of God, and to be one with him in thought 
and action ; and yet he was, on this theory, a deceiver. 
Besides this, blasphemy clothes itself in the garb of hu- 
mility. He presents himself, notwithstanding this bound- 



CHniSTJANITY A SUPERNATURAL FACT. 109 

less self-assertion, as the very model of humility, and is en- 
abled to take on all its moral power and all its sweet, at- 
tractive beauty. What, then, must we say, if Jesus is not 
the Christ of God? Must we not declare him to be the one 
great Antichrist of history ? But there is no difficulty 
in accepting the other alternative, that Jesus was the <me 
great transcendent miracle of goodness. 

This conclusion accords with the facts in the case. Let 
us note some of them in the light of the severest test which 
can be applied to any hypothesis, namely, that it not only 
shall account for the facts of the case, but that its falsity 
in view of those facts shall be inconceivable. 

In the first place, we have the origin and development 
of the church grounded on a personal relation to its 
Founder, — a society struggling to be holy and hoping to 
be sanctified, — a kingdom, however divided in doctrine, or 
ceremonial, or government, yet agreeing in a personal at- 
tachment to Jesus as the sinless Messiah, and accepting 
his claims not only as a mystery, but as a moral neces- 
sity. Such was the simple fact in the case. How can I *■ 
be accounted for, except on the theory that Jesus is all 
that he proclaims himself to be, — the supernatural ground 
and source of divine life ? 

In the second place, we have a civilization which he has 
created, and which thus rightly bears his name, — a civil- 
ization in which the sentiments of religion and of human- 
ity are blended together and made unceasingly dominant. 
Now, such a civilization necessitates for its starting-point 
and source just such a person and character as Jesus pro- 
claimed himself to be. These two facts would be the 
enigma of Providence, — unexplained and inexplicable, — 

if Jesus was not the holy Helper and Healer of humanity 
10 



110 EVIDENCES OF CHRUTIAmTT, 

This enigma is still further heightened, when we conside. 
the calmness and the depth of earnestness with which 
Jesus avows his belief in his own freedom from sin. For 
this interior calmness, and this freshness and strength of 
conviction, ever well up from a profoundly truthful na- 
ture. The conviction of his own purity had grown with 
his consciousness, for it was rooted in his conviction that he 
was one with his Father. A wicked man cannot so assert 
himself as to become, on account of that very self-assertion, 
the great moral attracting and governing power of the cen- 
turies. 

Now, there is no middle ground, as Renan imagines. 
If Jesus is not absolutely sinless, he is not only sinful, 
but falls below the level of our common humanity. If he 
was tainted by the least stain of enthusiasm or of hypoc- 
risy, then that stain is fatal to his character as the ideal 
of truth and goodness. Let us look at the case. He 
claimed to stand apart from, and above, all others in his 
moral character, solitary and alone, and yet he made him- 
self the sinless among the sinful, the model of humility. 
He gave to others the prayer for forgiveness, but he tacitly 
assumed that he needed none for himself. Others say 
'^ Our Father," for they belong to the community of sin- 
ners, while it is for him, standing alone and apart in his 
purity, to say "My Father." He everywhere taught or 
implied that his sinlessness had come from his oneness 
with God, — a oneness which antedated the creation of the 
world. He offered forgiveness to others ; he sought none 
for himself He presented himself as the Saviour for a 
lost world, while he himself needed no exterior help. 
Thus he presented himself as the Representative of God, 
the Founder of his kingdom, the Teacher of mankind, theii 



CHRisTiAmrr a supernatural fact. Ill 

perfect Exemplar, their only Redeemer, and their final 
Judge. Yet, with all these unique and transcendent 
claims, he added still another, namely, that of personal 
humility, and yet he did not destroy the matchless symme- 
try of his character. 

If now, by reason of any defect, however slight, he falls 
from the moral elevation he has assumed, — the loftiest 
position possible, — if he falls, we affirm, from that alti- 
tude, he falls with a tremendous momentum. The slight- 
est inclination of the well-balanced rock on the mountain- 
top hurls the entire mass down to the base, and buries it 
with an awfully crushing force beneath the soil. The 
very height from which Jesus would thus fall but in- 
creases the final velocity, and our Master sinks away for- 
ever from our sight ; for he falls burdened with the guilt 
:)f blasphemous assumption, or stained with the follies of a 
tnoral insanity. The condemnation of the high priest is 
just, and the cry about the cross, '' Crucify him ! " accords 
with the highest law of his own people. All his claims to 
stand on a plane essentially above that occupied by the 
race now rise up to condemn him, and the higher the 
claims the greater the condemnation. His religion be- 
comes a superstition, and his plan to save the world the 
delusion of a fanatic, or the scheme of an apostate. 

It would not answer to resort at random to both of these 
theories, and to make the character of Jesus a blending 
of fraud and of folly. Its singular moral unity, notwith- 
standing its great proportions, its wonderful beauty, and its 
amazing power in the world, are fatal to a shift so childish 
and so desperate. 

Thus, then, we return to the great alternative. Jesus 
was super-angelic or super-satanic in his character ; mar- 



112 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

vellous beyond expression in goodness, or monstrous be- 
yond all conception in wickedness. Browning has well 
expressed it : — 

** If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of man, 
Mere man, — the first and best, but nothing more, — 
Account him for reward of what he was. 
Now and forever wretchedest of all; 
Call Christ then the illimitable God, 
Or lost." 

His calling grew out of his character, for vocation and 
character ever go together. His mission as Revealer and 
Mediator, as the Head of the race and the Founder of a 
new humanity, as our great Helper here and as our great 
Stay and Hope hereafter, are supernatural features belong- 
ing to his person and his religion. They are only stated 
here, but will be further noticed or involved in the fol- 
lowing chapters. 

It may be asked how, in consistency with this view, shall 
we account for his reception by Jew and Gentile ? We 
answer, that reception was in perfect accord with their re- 
spective characters. The pious Hebrew gladly embraced 
him as the promised Messiah, while the mass of irreligious 
countrymen neglected his claims or rejected him with 
scorn. The Roman historians looked upon everything 
which seemed to be of a Jewish origin with unmitigated 
contempt. They either would not notice Christ and the 
new religion at all, or else they treated it as a superstition, 
both anti-social in its nature and revolutionary in its ten- 
dencies. (See the last chapter.) It is worthy of note 
that neither in the apostolic period nor in the present cen- 
tury is Christianity to be forced upon the soul, nor are ita 



CHBISTIANJTY A SUPERNATURAL FACT, ^^^ 

evidences to hold the intellect or sway the will in spite 
of the dominant alien dispositions of the heart. 

We may remark, before closing this section, that the mir- 
acles wrought, by the apostles in the name of Jesus con- 
stitute a part of the supernatural in Christianity. They 
were on the one hand vouchers for their divine authority, 
and on the other hand flashes of divine energy and love, 
— splendors reflected from the central orb of life and truth. 

Did the coming of such a personage as Jesus, with such 
a purpose, disturb the moral order of the world ? Was it 
not in fact a restorative of that order ? Has not his pres- 
ence in human history tended to vindicate the beauty and 
the worth of virtue ? Have not the higher harmonies of 
his own person mastered, and are they not destined to 
master still more, the disharmonies of our natural life ? 
Do we not see that here, as in other periods of the world's 
history, the supernatural supplements and keeps in place 
the natural, and is in fact the key-note of the universe ? 

Christianity is not, then, a speculation, or a system of 

opinions, or a mere form of worship with its rites ; for then 

it might have been the creation of some individual thinker, 

and so the natural product of human reason. It is, as we 

have seen, a fact at once historical and supernatural. He 

that does not receive it because of its real or imaginary 

difficulties must take care that he does not embrace greater 

difficulties in rejecting it. The sceptic must declare the 

evidences null and void ; he must admit that man's religious 

nature remains unmet and unsatisfied ; he must take the 

church without an adequate founder, and the Scriptures 

without an adequate origin , he must accept a civilization 

for which he can give no reasonable account whatever; he 

must reject all Divine Providence, for without Christ 
10* 



114 BVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT. 

there is uo key to interpret it. He must, in short, believe 
in a history that has no bond of union, and betake himself 
to natural religion, powerless though it has ever been 
shown to be, or he must, in a reasonless despair, turn 
atheist. 



CHAPTEE III. 

CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LIPB. 

SECTION FIB8T. 

THE CHARACTER OP THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. 

Religion, as an inward principle, is the fellowship of 
the Creator with the creature. This fellowship is, how- 
ever, mutual. God enters into the life of the soul, and 
the soul receives into itself the life of God. The one 
involves the other, for the movement is vital and not 
mechanical. This intercommunion is the religion of all 
moral and rational intelligences, angelic or human, sinless 
or redeemed. 

Christianity, as a principle of life, is the re-entrance 
of God into humanity. It is thus the reunion of man 
with his Maker. It is thus specific in its inward char- 
acter, as well as in its outward expression : for it im- 
plies an estrangement, and presupposes a mediation. 

Thus Christianity is more than the free, original aspira- 
tion of an unfallen nature. It is the renewal of the 
friendship between the soul and its God. This renewal is 
secured by the entrance and permanent dwelling of the 
Son of God in the life of humanity. 

The incarnation is, as we have already seen, the essen- 
tial objective fact of Christianity, while the presence of 
God in the individual soul is its fontal subjective principle. 

115 



116 BVIDENCBS OF VHRISTIANITT, 

The historical Christ is not lost to the race, but be- 
comes the Christ of humanity, and pre-eminently of the 
church. 

This spiritual life has its seat in the aifections ; for in 
religion these are central. They are awakened by a con- 
scious, personal, and friendly relation between ourselves 
and God. It is life alone which can beget life. The 
divine life is in reality much more an impartation than an 
acquisition. Its earliest manifestations are, and must be, 
since man is a fallen creature, repentance and faith. 

The one is the negative side of the new life, since it is 
an abandonment of self as an independent centre of au- 
thority, a forsaking of the world as an independent source 
of happiness. It is this which finds a place for the con- 
science, which precludes sentimentalism, and which gives 
a realistic character to all one's rising religious convic- 
tions and persuasions. 

The other is the positive side of the new life, since it is 
a living appropriation of the realities of the eternal world. 
But its highest expression is pure love; for love is the 
very soul of faith. Christianity is primarily a supreme 
affection. As the Apostle John affirmed, "He thatdwell- 
eth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." It is 
not love for the ritual, which makes one a formalist ] nor 
merely for a creed, which makes one a bigot ; nor simply 
for a sect, which makes one a partisan ; nor even for an 
idea of God, which can only make a sentimentalist or a 
mystic. But it is love to a holy, a gracious, and a sover- 
eiarn God, which, in the language of Peter, makes one a 
partaker of the divine nature. This regnant temper of 
the soul penetrates all human capabilities and all human 
relations, and pervades all human activities. While its 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LIFE, 11 7 

most direct and exclusive expression is found in the formal 
act of worship, either of prayer or of praise, it also shows 
itself in fellowship Aviththe divine wherever found. Thus. 
a love for one's self, as the image of God, is made legitimate, 
as well as the love for one's fellow-creatures, who are cre- 
ated in the same likeness. Thus, too, this bond of anion 
strengthens as the creature grows in resemblance to his 
Maker. Souls which bear the most of the divine image 
awaken our love in the highest degree ; while the most 
degraded, bj the very foct that thej still carry the natural 
^mage of God, and so by the possibilities which they still 
bear in themselves, awaken our deepest compassion and 
sympathy. Even the brutes, as reflections of divine intel- 
ligence, become the objects of kindness, and nature herself 
is looked upon with new and fresh interest, as revealing 
the thought and will of God. Everything is looked at in 
the light of its relation to God, or in its bearing on the 
titernal world. Thus we are brought into contact and har- 
mony with the humblest of God's creatures, and with the 
lowliest of his works, as well as raised up to a full and 
free communion with the Author of them all. While the 
divine life flows along in as many difierent channels as 
there are marked individualities, it is narrowed and colored 
by the constitutional bias, as well as by the education and 
peculiar surroundings, of each soul. But yet it has in all 
men certain general characteristics more or less fully 
developed. We shall find in the church of all ages and 
of all nations the common graces of humility, of patience, 
of forgiveness, of fortitude, of benevolence, of spiritual 
joy, and of heroic self-sacrifice. 

This divine life carries with it the assurance of its own 
continuance. The soul living on the truths of the spirit- 



118 EVIDENCES OF CTlRISTIAmTT. 

ual world cannot but be conscious of its own destiny. 
Hope is thus an abiding, essential element in the Christian 
consciousness. The hope tlius acquired on earth has in its 
very nature an eternal life. Dissatisfied bj reason of his 
failures to reach his own ideal, and trembling amid the 
uncertainties of the present, the Christian jet looks with 
sure confidence to the grand issues which await his en- 
trance on another life. 

But the divine life reveals itself in right knowledge, as 
well as in right afiections. In fact, the two are insepara- 
ble. An essential defect in the one involves a radical 
want in the other. Thus superstition is founded on a 
false knowledge, and is ever attended with inordinate or 
malignant afiections, from which an impure enthusiasm or 
a fierce fanaticism is sure to spring. Thus low views of 
religious truth touch the soul only on its circumference, 
and never pierce to its inmost centre, and so fail to awaken 
the spirit of devotion and of self-consecration This 
knowledge is something deeper than opinion, since it is the 
richest possession and treasure the soul can have. It is 
not speculative in its character, but a matter of experi- 
ence ; a knowledge tested, not by analysis or by clearness 
of mental conception, but by actual trial. In the one case 
there is a settled conviction of the truth, and in the other 
only an idle play of the reason, or a vain flight of human 
fancy. This knowledge is not properly scientific in its 
character, for it does not require for its attainment the 
culture and discipline of the schools. It need not embody 
itself in the formulas of a theological system. These 
formulas are, however, valuable in marking the progress of 
tlie science of theology, and in fixing for the age the es- 
sential verities of religion, and even in advancing the 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LIFE, 119 

growth of many souls ; but they are not at all essential to 
spiritual life. This whole subject will open itself more 
fully when we come to consider Christianity as a divine 
doctrine. 

Christianity, as a life, must culminate in right actions. 
This is the flower and the fruit of holy living. Our re- 
/iojion is not a vao-ue and aimless emotion. It is more 
than an act of devotion. It does not find full expression 
and embodiment even in any form of worship, nor does it 
exhaust its power and its beauty in the gorgeous ceremo- 
nial of the consecrated temple. Christian thought and 
Christian feeling must and will incarnate themselves in 
Christian speech and Christian deeds. Divine love is the 
generative force and the regulative principle in Christian 
character and conduct ; for it is the most pure and the 
most evangelic of all internal forces. There may b( 
springs of action more violent than this, as the many forms 
of hate ; or more exhausting, as ambition and avarice : but 
this principle of life is steady and constant, exciting no 
direct antagonism and suffering no direct defeats. From 
this one spring of life we have the law of submission and 
the law of consecration, — all that is sweet or saintly ir 
suffering, and all that is heroic in achievement. Thus, 
the entire man is moulded after the new and higher type 
given by the great Exemplar. Were this not the case, the 
religion of Jesus would be a splendid failure. We shall 
need to recur to this aspect of Christianity when w« 
come to consider it as a code of morals — as a divine law. 



12*^ BVTDBKCBS OF CnmSTlANJTY, . 

SECTION SECOND. 

ITS DIVINE TYPE. 

This new life bears the stamp of a divine origin. li 
is not the outgrowth of a late culture, the blossom and 
frao^rance of man's latest and best thouojhf, the flowi'.rino; 
out of our common humanity. It is in no sense the 
natural fruit of our present civilization. This view would 
be an anachronism in history, and a reversal of the re- 
lations of cause and effect. For the apostles, inferior 
though they be in learning, or even in genius, to the fore- 
most men of the world, yet in purity and in depth of re- 
ligious life are certainly their equals. 

But the life introduced by Christ eighteen centuries ago 
is the same as that which he now imparts, and is aj 
truly above the average life of the present day in mora' 
beauty and power, as it was above that which marked the 
age of the Caesars. 

Each succeeding century only opens new channels and 
new spheres for the Christian activities, and brings out 
into bolder relief some one or more of its principles, and 
illustrates in new and fresh ways some of its far-reaching 
applications. But yet the culture of no age, in itself con- 
sidered, can generate this new divine life. 

Lotus, then, briefly notice the highest forms and styles 
of religious life which the soul alone, with all its natural 
aids, can call into existence. They all spring from the 
same religious instincts and wants of our nature. Man 
must worship, and worship his ideal. This religious ten- 
dency is variously colored and directed by the special 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LIPS, 121 

culture of the individual, and by the general culture of 
the age in which he lives. 

It is shaped in some bj the idea of duty, and by the 
desire of personal merit. In this case, religion becomes a 
nile of conduct, rather than an inward spring of feeling, 
thought, and action. It is narrow and superficial in its 
range, and is always, in the case of any conflict, overborne 
by human interest and human passion. In strong natures 
it leads to asceticism, and in weak souls it degenerates 
into formalism. In all, it is cold, and dry, and barren, 
and, in short, utterly selfish. 

Again, it may be united with aesthetic culture, and then 
it takes on a pure and lofty sentimentalism, but without 
any power to lighten the sorrows of the soul, or to secure 
iny self-sacrifice or any noble achievement. It becomes a 
mere religious idealism. Men play with the ideas of God 
and Christ, and of man, and of human virtue and vice, as 
a child plays with its dolls. The grand verities of religion 
float in their imaginations, refine their spiritual tastes, 
and excite their wonderment, but do not subdue their wi^; 
or engage the conscience, or bind the soul to the law of 
practical godliness. 

Again, this instinctive religious feeling may be colored 
by a contemplative turn of mind. It then assumes the 
form of mysticism, and leads to the deification of self. 
There is often in the mystic an earnestness and energy of 
feeling, which is as deluding as it is imposing; for it is a 
species of self-righteousness so subtle as to hide itself from 
one's consciousness. In all unchristian systems this prin- 
ciple generates a self-sufficiency and self-complacency ab- 
solutely appalling. Mysticism, pure and simple, untrans- 
11 



122 EVIDENCES OF CHR18TIAN1TT, 

formed bj the Christian spirit or the Christian truth, n 

the verj essence of heathenism. 

We maj notice another type of natural religious life. 
In some cases the human sympathies almost absorb the re- 
ligious instincts of our being. Here God and man are 
made to change places, so ttiat while these religionists are 
philanthropic in their creed, thej are misanthropic in 
their temper. This is inevitable; for a break with God 
always involves a break with man. All genuine and pro- 
found sympathy with the race must rest on an apprecia- 
tion of the relations which it holds to God, and must 
spring from a cordial fellowship with the divine adminis- 
tration. Such a religion, if it deserves the name, is thin 
and repulsive in the extreme. 

These forms of religion are all rooted in self, as much 
so as when they passed under the old name of " Pagan," 
or were dignified with the epithet of Stoic and Platonic 
philosophy. They are all of human origin and growth. 
This is a necessity. The soul cannot go out of or beyond 
itself It cannot rise above its own level, nor can it create 
truth, or generate any new spiritual force. No education 
or appliances can enable the human mind and heart to 
produce any real divine life. The several religious mani- 
festations noticed above may be variously blended, but in 
every case they will always lack that spiritual regenerative 
element which belongs alone to the Christian faith. The 
Christian life, then, must exist by virtue of a power out of 
and above ourselves, by the presence of an indwelling Christ. 

It is true the evidence of such a life in its inmost move- 
ments can be known only to its possessor. He alone has 
experienced the radical change which it involves. The 
truth of Christianity rests, with him, not on external evi- 



I 



CBRISTUNITY A DIVJNE LIFE. 123 

dence, or a ay conscious logical process, but on a simple 
experience of its life-giving power. But a man's charac- 
ter reveals Itself to others, and the testimony of good men 
as to their own life experience is not without its weight. 
This experimental proof, then, is open to any community 
among whom Christianity has found a lodgement. 

It is true men are liable to be deceived in reading their 
own conscioasness, and in judging of the changes wrought 
in their own characters. But this habit cannot invalidate 
the concurring testimony of many thousands, extending as 
it does through many centuries. Besides, the hypocrites 
and fanatics are sure in the course of time to disclose the 
hollowness of their faith ; and when men during a long 
period, under many and varied trials, show their sincerity 
and sobriety, we cannot place them under either of these 
classes, but must admit the testimony of both their charac- 
ters and their words. 

It is often objected that we see everywhere great de- 
fects in the actual Christian life. Such is undoubtedly 
the fact. God does not treat men as automatons, or destroy 
their distinctive individualities, or the freedom of their 
wills. The wonder is that Christianity is able to do as 
well as it does with the material it has to work on, with 
natures so alienated from the life of God. The divine 
plan seems to be to give scope in this world for the disci- 
pline of virtue, and for the evolving and training of the 
whole man for a higher and broader life in heaven. We 
have its beginning here amid inward fluctuations and 
outward conflicts, and its final consummation hereafter. 
This growth amid dangers and struggles is just what 
Christianity anticipates and provides for. 

Besides, one single example of genuine and noble Chris- 



124 RVIDRNCKS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

tian life would be enough for our purpose. Just as a soli- 
tary act of creative power would reveal a personal God, 
so a solitary instance of a consecrated human life would 
reveal the presence of a supernatural agency. We might 
refer to the Apostle Paul, and ask any one to read his life 
and study his history, and then explain that life and that 
history on any worldly or natural principle if he can. 
We might refer to the Christian martyr Stephen, or to any 
other one of the thousands who have followed in his foot- 
steps, and ask one to account for the triumphant death they 
died, on any other supposition than that Christianity is 
irue. A man may die bravely when pride or necessity 
forces him to do so, or when the sentiment of duty or the 
feeling of patriotism urges him to make the sacrifice. He 
may even throw away his life when the tide of passion or 
fanaticism sweeps away both his fears and his reason. All 
this is quite possible and quite natural. But when a man 
dies calmly and peacefully, with a clear and full apprehen- 
sion of the change of worlds he is to make, and with a 
spirit of forgiveness to his enemies, and with a heart rec- 
onciled to God, then he does in that closing scene of hia 
life witness to the truth of that religion he has professed. 
Such is the character of a Christian martyr. May we not 
conclude, then, that Christianity is a di\'ine life, and vindi- 
cates its claim to be of divine origin ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE DOCTRINE. 

SECTION FIRST. 

THE IDEA OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 

A CnmsTiAN doctrine is a fact of the Christian revela- 
tion, in its moral value and significance. It is the inter- 
pretation of some aspect of the person of Christ, or of his 
mission and work in the sphere both of nature and of 
spirit. It is a deed-act of God, in its religious worth and 
bearing and consequences : something done bj him in tk^ 
economy of redemption, or wrought by him in the con 
sciousness of the individual. All such divine movement? 
are the agencies of Christ, for he is the Logos — the Re- 
vealer — everywhere and always. 

A doctrine is not a mere opinion, since this lacks all 
authority. It is not a speculation, for this is purely sub- 
jective in its character, and is the property of the phi- 
losopher, and not of the church. It is more, even, than a 
theological statement, since this is the special formula of 
the schools, — a dogma dressed in the fashion of the age 
which gave it birth. This transient element marks the 
period to which it belongs. A Christian doctrine, then, is 
a Christian truth, realistic in its character, permanent and 
universal in its nature, and authoritative in its claims for 
recognition. 

125 



126 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

The facts, then, of the Christian revelation, which consti- 
tute the substance of its doctrines, must have a divinely 
authorized interpretation. Christ must explain himself, or 
must appoint others to speak in his behalf. If he would 
save his religion from human alloy, and transmit it in its 
essential purity to after ages, and thus make it the final 
possession of humanity, he must reveal himself in an es- 
pecial manner to his chosen disciples. And yet he cannot 
do this till he has finished his earthly career, and has spir- 
itually reappeared in the life of his people. 

This was a part of his plan for the recovery of the race. 
He promised to be to his apostles, after his death, more 
than he was before, — to make his spiritual presence a 
source of supernatural light. The apostles were thus to 
become the authoritative expounders of his religion. In 
harmony with his great promise to guide them into all 
truth, we have the initial step and fontal beginning of their 
inspiration on the day of Pentecost. Then was touched 
the very fountain of their thinking and feeling, and a di- 
vine impress given to their oral teaching and their writing. 
In agreement with both the promise and the fulfilment, we 
have their claims to be the chief guides of the race in the 
sphere of morals and religion. Now their preaching was 
for their day, but their writings for all the centuries. 

This simple statement of the case commends itself to the 
Christian consciousness. It is consistent throughout ; the 
promise, the fact, and the claim, perfectly accord. The 
New Testament contains nothing inconsistent with this 
general view. Inspiration has to do solely with religion. 
If, however, any one should affirm that the sacred records 
contain anything which in the mind of the writer had no 
bearing on any religious uioctrine, then it is for him tc 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE DOCTBIKS, 127 

make out his case. The presumption is, that the Bible is 

throughout a religious book. 

The student of early Christian history is struck by the 
careful reserve in the Gospels, — a reserve all the more 
remarkable from the profound interest of the historians. 
They seem to be restrained by a higher spirit than their 
own. And when he comes to the Epistles, he is equally 
impressed with the wonderful creative power and fresh- 
ness of the writing. He feels a certain realistic air and 
tone, which separate them, by a wide interval, from all 
the succeeding writers. 

We are to bear in mind that these apostolic men 
expound the religion of Jesus, not as apprehended by 
the intellect alone, in set formulas, but as experienced by 
the soul, in the popular language of every-day life. We 
are also to remember that divine life and light flow along 
the preordained channels of thought and feeling peculiar 
to each writer ; and that he remains free in his choice of 
materials, and of occasion, free in his methods and in his 
diction. We are not here stating any theory of inspira- 
tion ; that belongs to theological science. We only insist 
on the general fact. 

Every doctrine, then, must have the sanction of inspi- 
ration. It is not a deduction of the reason, or a simple 
intuition of the soul, but is a truth pronounced by 
divine authority. If at any time there should seem to 
be a conflict between our moral intuitions and any 
Christian doctrine, then we have either misapprehended 
the sacred record, or we have dignified our common judg 
ments with this higher appellation. Here we are in 
danger ; for while we can rely on the simple ultimate prop- 
ositions which our moral sense gives us, we cannot at all 



128 EVIDEKCES OF CnRlSTIANITY, 

be sure we are right when we come to apply these first 
truths to individaal concrete cases. Complex moral judg- 
ments are not always infallible, except in perfect natures. 
To make the reason the test of truth is to betray no little 
ignorance of the many grand speculative failures in the 
pursuits of philosophy. Nor are these abstract dogmas, 
which the individual reason alone warrants, of any great 
value in religion. They lack objective support, and per- 
manence, and spiritual depth. The torchlight has its uses, 
but it can never ripen the harvest. As Christianity, then, 
is historical, so it has its records; and as it is crystallized 
in the consciousness of Christ and of his apostles, so those 
records are infallible. 

But the general Christian consciousness, while it is essen- 
tially one with the apostolic consciousness, must ever grow 
in the fulness and richness of its contents. Its essential 
elements and its regulative principle are found in the in- 
spired word ; but its apprehension of the meaning of the 
great facts and principles given in revelation becomes 
clearer and broader every day. The study of nature, 
of life, and of human history, and, above all, of the 
various sciences, is presenting the truth in new relations, 
and opening for it new and world-wide applications. 
Even the wrecks of philosophic systems are yielding rich 
contributions to our knowledge of the economy of redemp- 
tion. Thus, while we are dependent on the authority of 
apostolic men, and must accept their writings as the 
fixed standard of faith and practice, we have still the 
advantage of being able to illustrate their principles in 
the advancing light of eighteen centuries. Here there is 
room for a genuine Christian development. 

All the doctrines of Christianity belong to a super- 



CRRT3TIANITY A DIVINE DOCTRINE. 129 

natural religion, and so have in them a supernatural ele- 
ment. In their inmost essence thej transcend the reason. 
In short, thej are. and must be, mysteries ; for the/ relate 
either to the infinite, or to the meeting and crossing of 
the infinite and the finite. The first is an absolute mys- 
tery; the second, a relative one. Both are readily distin- 
guished from an absurdity, which is a simple self-contra- 
diction. This transcendent element in the doctrines of 
our faith is an evidence in their favor ; for a religion per- 
fectly comprehended is a religion of human origin. 
Besides, it is only as mysteries that they satisfy the soul 
in its highest moods, — when it is struggling to rise above 
the limits of its present life, and yearning for a fellowship 
with the unknown. They can be felt where they cannot 
be comprehended. To reject them because of their mys- 
teriousness is to throw away our richest treasures, and to 
ignore the divine side of our natures. Mr. Spencer, in 
his First Principles, well remarks : '' Positive knowledge 
does not, and never can, fill the whole region of possible 
thouo;ht. . . . Throuo-hout all future time the human 
mind may occupy itself, not only with ascertained phe- 
nomena and their relations, but also with the unascertained 
something which phenomena and their relations imply. 
Hence, if knowledge cannot monopolize consciousness, — 
if it must always continue possible for the mind to dwell 
upon that which transcends knowledge, — then there can 
never cease to be a place for something of the nature of 
religion." Here, then, there is room for faith. She gathers 
what reason leaves behind ; for reason is conceptive and 
constructive, while faith is simply sensitive and receptive. 
The one is an intellection, the other is an affection of th^ 



130 EVIDBNCBS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

soul. Both are modes of mental action equally normal 
and legitimate. 

All these truths, then, have marked doctrinal notes. 
Thejr are realistic, permanent, universal, mysterious, and 
authoritative in their character, and they all centre about 
the God-man. Thus Christianity, as a divine doctrine, is 
redemptive in its nature. Its entire creed is gathered up 
and expressed in the symbols of its faith. Here we find 
Christ's idea of his own religion, and that idea is voiced 
in one word, — redemption. 

Christianity, then, is a unity, — a central doctrine on 
which all its truths depend. The honest difficulties which 
our reason starts are connected with some one or more of 
its many sides and aspects. They touch the circumference 
and not the centre of our faith. They do not hold against 
Christianity as a whole, but only against some presentation, 
or some real or supposed application, of some particular 
doctrine. Now, astronomers have sought to account for 
the spots on the sun; but their success or failure does not 
alter the fact that that central orb is still the source of 
light and heat to the solar system. No one doubts its ef- 
fulgence, or questions its right to rule the day. When 
Christianity is judged of as a complete doctrinal system, — 
is examined in its totality, — then it is that its divinity 
becomes most apparent. 

Here it is to be noted that a person may have doubts, 
more or less serious and persistent, on some of the essential 
as well as on the non-essential points in revealed truth, with- 
out rejecting Christianity ; for his mind may be illogical ; 
or he may still suffer from an early sceptical tendency ; 
or his will may not yet be submissive, ^ — for faith is the 
synthesis of the intellect and will; or he may be be* 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE DOCTRINE. 131 

wildered by the opposing opinions of different evangelical 
communities, forgetting the governing fact of their sub- 
stantial agreement. But if, amid all these sad doubts, he 
has a personal attachment to Christ, then he is in the tru- 
est sense of the word a Christian ; for he must hold to 
the central doctrine of redemption. We maj add, that a 
man may be a sincere believer in Christianity as a whole, 
in spite of his misgivings on various isolated points of 
Christian truth. 

SECTION SECOND. 

THE DOCTRINAL ASPECTS OF CHHISTIANITY. 

Christianity is at least the republication of natural re- 
ligion in clearer terms, with stronger motives and with 
fuller evidence. We are first of all to look at the truths 
of nature in the light of this new revelation. 

The heart of the race in its moral estrangement has 
voiced its yearnings and its needs in Polytheism. The in- 
tellect of the race in its fall from God has embodied its 
demands in Pantheism. The underlying truth in the first 
error is the personality of God ; and in the other, is the 
nearness of God to his creatures. It was the mission of 
Judaism to teach both truths without alloy. The the- 
ophanies, the symbolism of the tabernacle and the temple, 
the cultus, the teachings of the prophets, and the super- 
natural providences, all proclaimed that Jehovah was a 
personal Being, dwelling in the midst of his people. But 
this is treated of more fully in the chapter on Christianity 
as a divine fulfilment. 

But these truths of natural religion, so covered over by 
gross superstition or by idle speculations, and so imper- 



132 EVIDENCES OF CHRTSTIANITT, 

fectly brought home to the minds and hearts of the Jew- 
ish people, are not onlj reaffirmed, but clearly articulated, 
in the religion of Christ. They are the general interpre- 
tation of the perpetual miracle and mystery of the In- 
carnation. 

The coming of Christ reveals the ascending presence of 
God, frees him from the iron mechanism of his own laws, 
and presents him as an absolute personality. It casts a 
gleam of light, faint but real, on the way in which we are 
to think of him. He is alive — alive throughout — alive 
absolutely and eternally. There are no latent elements in 
his consciousness. He knows himself absolutely, and can 
perfectly respond to the cry of his creatures. This abso- 
lute personality is triune ; for he is not a subject finding 
his object out of himself, but his own consciousness is the 
living synthesis of both. This tri-personality represents 
the divine life in its absolute fulness. Analogy seems to 
teach, that simple, bare unity is death, — for it is the form 
of consciousness without any content, — and that duality is 
only an infinite antagonism ; while the blending of subject 
and object in the unity of consciousness, in other words, 
trinity alone, is life. God is three in a sense in which he is 
not one, and in such a sense as makes him the only living 
and absolute personality. This speculative statement is 
without any special value, except in just so far as it may 
bring into relief the grand idea of Christ and his apostles, 
that God is not only a personal Being, but that there is an 
absolute fulness of personal life in him. 

Of the higher views we have of the divine character, so 
faintly reflected in nature, we can only here mention 
one, — we mean the sympathy of God. The sublimer 
the ancient conceptions of his perfections were, the more 



CHBlSTlAmTY A DIVINE DOCTRINE. 133 

remote and unapproachable did they make hia blessed 
presence. But the assuming of our nature and the living 
of our life is an exhibition of the tenderness of divine love. 
God is touched by our woes, and has a fellow-feeling with 
the wants and sorrows of humanity. This sympathy is 
not secured by the sacrifice of either the purity or the 
greatness of his nature. God has moved the throne of hig 
glory from the great cosmos, and enthroned himself in the 
heart of humanity. The divine light and love is not with- 
drawn from the universe, but here centres as in a burning 
and radiant focus. Were not God great, his love could 
not be so gentle and so tender and so pure. 

Redemption presupposes creation, gives to it a marked 
prominence, and clothes it with new moral significance. 
This doctrine was nearly lost in the speculations of the 
ancient philosophers. Dualism and Pantheism divided their 
sufirages. Modern culture has outgrown the first of these 
theories ; while the second still holds its sway under the 
imposing dogma of evolution. Here Christianity renders 
a signal service to natural religion ; for it completely 
breaks the chain of development, in the person of its 
Founder. This is done, not in a past geologic period, but ic 
human history, and even within historic times. In charac- 
ter and in influence he had no forerunner and no successor. 
On his human side he was a new creation. In him the 
order of nature is plainly subordinated to the moral order 
of the universe. In this deed-act of God, the question of 
creation is settled, and settled against the idea of evolu- 
tion. We are prepared to accept with a stronger faith the 
primal truth of natural religion, that the universe is but 
the product of a supreme and sovereign volition. We can 
admit the Mosaic account of that cycle of creation, which 
12 



134 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

made the earth "the Bethlehem of the worlds." Ho^ 
matter or mind, atom or force, was generated, belongs 
to the province of speculation, and not to the sphere of 
religion. Christianity does not touch such questions, 
because it addresses our religious consciousness, and not 
our intellects simply and alone. The proposition that the 
world was created out of nothing is certainly faulty in 
its statement, but involves no absurdity. Oken's famous 

algebraic formula shows this, = -| . The world, aside 

from the Will on which it rests, and from which it sprang, 
is nothing ; and yet for us it is an endless process of 
growth and decay, with its unnumbered powers of attrac- 
tion and repulsion. 

The materialists have sought to revive the old, exploded 
idea of '' spontaneous generation." The experiments of 
Pasteur seem to have settled the case. Their accuracy 
was questioned in France, and the Academy appointed a 
commission in order to test them. They presented their 
report in 1865, in which they close with these words : 
" To conclude, the facts observed by M. Pasteur, and con- 
tested by MM. Ponchet, Joly, Musset, are perfectly 
accurate." Had an opposite conclusion been reached, we 
should only have discovered another of God's creational 
laws, — another of his modes of introducing new forms of 
life. Chemists are but discoverers, — never, in the proper 
sense of the word, creators; their laboratories rest on the 
great laboratory of nature which. God has made, and where 
he alone works. 

It is a favorite idea with many men of science, that all 
forces only change their form, while they are in themselves 
indestructible. This only shows that the results of divine 
agency are never lost, but maintain themselves perpetually. 



cnmsTiAinTY a divine doctrine. 135 

This persistence of force is only another name for the abid- 
ing presence and constant energy of God himself. It may 
be admitted that, in the absolute sense of the proposition, 
the sum of the forces of the universe has never been, 
and can never be, increased or diminished; for the first 
and absolute cause includes in itself the sum of all causes. 
Creation itself can add nothins; to God. or auo;ment at all 
the fulness of his power, the omnipotence of his will. 
Such hypotheses are speculative in their character, and so, 
perhaps, are the answers. As the one is outside of the 
sphere of science, so is the other foreign to the spirit of 
religion. Yet the answer, in a speculative point of view, 
is altogether adequate. 

Redemption is the key also to Providence. It is, in 
fact, the crowning instance of God's providential govern- 
ment. Now, Christianity rejects the doctrine of chance, 
for it teaches the immutability of God and the uniformity 
of his laws. It rejects also the notion of fate, since it 
represents man as made in the image of God, and so 
endowed with free will. It always treats him as though 
that natural image could never be lost. It addresses him 
as a creature swayed by motives, and so under the law of 
rationality. It thus recognizes the true factors of moral 
life, — freedom and order, liberty and law. These are 
essential, for law without freedom would be a dead neces- 
sity, and freedom without law would be simple license, 
pure lawlessness. Thus man is treated as the subject of a 
government already established in this world. 

It is true that everything is under law, but law is only 
God's mode of acting, his method of procedure. This 
fact does not preclude moral ends, and so does not shut 
out all foresight. Thus the forces of nature and of Hfe, 



136 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

in their endless combinations and interactions, work out 
moral ends in the government of God. It is a divine ar- 
rangement, and so a divine providence. The providential 
element is the more marked, as great moral results are 
seen to follow quite independently of any conscious human 
agency. 

This doctrine is presented in Christianity as a comfort 
and support, rather than as a guide. It is the resting-place 
of the soul. Such a view of the outward course of events — 
events so entangled and so mysterious — can alone satisfy 
the cravings and aspirations of the soul ; for if God be 
not the God of providence, then he is for us no God at 
all. Prophecy is the dream of fanatics, and prayer the 
delusion of fools. In spite, then, of all the difficulties which 
a narrow observation and a narrower logic may suggest, 
yet a moral necessity, confirmed by marking the course of 
history through the sweep of centuries, and by noting the 
turn of affairs at great junctures in the lives of individ- 
uals and of nations, — a turn often brought about appar- 
ently by trifles, — compels us to admit the superintending 
care of God in shaping our lives, and in controlling oui 
destiny. 

But Christianity is more than a republication of natural 
religion; it is a redemptive agency. Its aim is not to 
awaken and to direct the religious instincts of the creature, 
nor even barely to reinstate the sinner in the lost favor of 
God, but to raise him into a fuller and richer life, and to 
make him the best beloved child in the family of God. 
The place he is to occupy iu the divine favor will far 
transcend that which he lost in the great apostasy. 

God surmounts the obstacle of human sin and guilt, re- 
enters humanity, and so reconciles himself to the race. He 



CHRISTIAmTT A DIVINE DOCTBINB. 137 

assumed human nature with the penalty of death upon it ; 
and he assumed huaaan life without its sinfulness, and 
yet with all tne tareatening consequences of sin upon it. He 
rook into his own consciousness all the misery which was 
the inheritance of a lost race. This humanity he car- 
ried through all the great experiences of life, bore it with 
him into the curse of death, and raised it up and presented 
it in the eternal world, thus faultless, transfigured, recon- 
ciled to God. In this life and death we have that unique 
and transcendent penalty, which fell upon the substitute 
for sinners ; for he felt the guilt, the pollution, the folly, 
the misery, and the doom of the sinner, as the sinner did 
not and could not feel them ; for he was in full sympa- 
thy with God as well as with man, and so fully alive to 
the wretchedness and woe of a lost world. Thus Christ, 
though sinless, experienced the sinner's sin. It was in 
this new humanity, in this divinely human life, thus 
suffering in the place and in behalf of a sinful rax^e, that 
God reconciled himself to that race. It was in and by 
this substitution that God changed his attitude towards the 
world, and was enabled in harmony with his own charac- 
ter to offer to the guilty free and full pardon, and to in- 
vite to the fullest and richest participation in his love. 
They were only as freely and a^ gladly to accept the 
proffered friendship. A new fellowship Avas thus to be 
established, with richer experiences, sweeter memories, and 
grander hopes. 

But souls must be individually reconciled to God. A 
new life must be originated within them, as well as a ne^v 
relation established for them. They must be renewed as 
well as pardoned. The character must be changed as 

well as the person justified. But the great doctrine of a 
12* 



138 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

new life has already been presented in our previous chapteij 
and need not be here further developed. 

Here the great mystery of human freedom and of divine 
sovereignty forces itself on our attention. It does not be- 
long exclusively to Christianity. The religion of Christ 
did not create it, but accepted it as an ineradicable fact of 
life. It has brought it into prominence only by exalting 
human life, and clothing it with a new worth and dignity. 
Christianity does not deal with these truths as speculative 
opinions, for then it would cease to be a religion, and be- 
come a philosophy. It treats of them just so far as they 
relate to our religious consciousness. And here it is clear 
and decisive. It makes them the governing elements in 
shaping our destiny. It does not aim to reconcile them ; 
nor does it absorb one in the other, or magnify one at 
the expense of the other, but makes each regnant in its 
own sphere; freedom in the province of duty and of re- 
sponsibility, and sovereignty in the domain of authority 
and of dependence. It thus gives to both free play and 
full force, without the slightest hesitation or reserve. 
Now, the sphere of dependence encloses in a larger con- 
centric circle the sphere of freedom, so that the primal 
factor in the Christian life is the divine agency. But the 
relation is, as we have elsewhere said, a vital and not a me- 
chanical one. God elects man, and man elects God, and 
the one does not exist as a realized fact without the other. 
Naturally and logically considered, God first movee on 
the soul ; but in and within that very movement the soul 
turns towards God. Thus Christianity deals with these 
questions in the very way to satisfy the religious cravings 
of the soul, and in the only way it could treat them with- 
out denying its own natuie. 



CBRISTIAmTY A DIVINE DOCTRINB. 139 

The gospel is the only religion which lifts the veil of 
nature, and opens to our hopes or to our fears the realities 
of a future life. The common aspirations of man and the 
reasonings of philosophers are confirmed, not so much by 
any solemn affirmation of a divine messenger, verified 
though it be by miracles, as by the great fact of the res- 
urrection of our Lord. The doctrine of the immortality of 
the soul now becomes the doctrine of the resurrection of the 
dead. Our present physical bodies are not to be restored, 
for ' ' the mortal is to put on immortality ; ' ' nor is the new 
body to be simply a new creation, for it is to have points 
of identity with the one we now possess ; nor is it to be 
merely evolved from the dust of the organism laid in the 
grave, for the seat of identity must be in the centre of man's 
life. The soul is to be the formative principle of both 
oodies, — of the present organism chiefly through its lower 
impulses ; of the future one through its higher spiritual 
capacities. Just where there are now spiritual features 
in the expression of the man, by look, or speech, or 
air, or manner, just there, doubtless, are to be found 
points of identity between what we are now, and what 
we are to become hereafter. The materials of both are 
to be drawn from this earth, and so are to be the same. 
The future body is termed spiritual, because the spirit — 
the soul in its moral and rational capacities and affections — 
is to pervade and animate, and to give form to the new organ- 
ism. Each soul will have its own body, because each will, 
have its own separate individual character, — a character 
which will take on its own separate, individual, bodily form. 
The new body is thus to be the organ of the soul, in its 
new and higher life. 

The private individual judgment will begin at once after 



140 EVTDBITCES OF CHRISTIANITY* 

death. It will be the opening of the great judgment-day. 
This will culminate in the final one at the end of proba- 
tion. This public judgment will close the great daj of 
account. It is only then that all the results of human life 
will have been gathered ; and it is only in these results 
that the final judgment can fully enter into the conscious- 
ness of the creature. The agents for effecting this judg- 
ment will be found to be within us, as they are called 
into activity by the surroundings of an eternal world. 

The decisions of that day will rest, not on abstract legal 
principles, but on moral and spiritual ones. Christ is to 
be the dividing line, the point of attraction or of repulsion 
to all souls. Everything will depend on the character of 
the relation Avhich each and every one will then hold to 
him. It is faith, and not obedience, which is to settle 
the destiny of the soul. That faith may be gathered into 
a formal act of confidence, or may exist only as a perma- 
nent spirit of trust, waiting for the Great Helper, ere it 
can assume a distinct and positive form. For all in 
Heathendom, as in Christendom, are put in a new relation 
by the coming of Christ, and only need to exercise as sin- 
ners a childlike trust and confidence in God, — in him afi 
revealed in Christ, or as reflected in nature and in human- 
ity. It is to be remembered, that the measure of our ap- 
prehension of Christ is not the measure of what he has 
done for us. An objective redemption has been accom- 
plished for the race, and each and every member of it has 
been placed on probation ; and the possibility of salvation is 
secured for every soul. 

We are now brought before the great doctrine of future 
rewards and future retributions. Christianity does with- 
out doubt secure a higher heaven or a deeper hell ; foi 



rnmSTTAmTY A DIVINE DOCTRINE, 141 

they are the certain issues of a reconciliation, or of a 
renewed and persistent rebellion. These issues are made 
to depend on this present life. There is but one probation, 
on which hangs the future weal or woe of every soul. It 
is clear that Christianity provides for no second trial ; and 
yet Christianity seems to be God's final message to the 
race. 

This doctrine of one probation and one only is sup- 
ported by the evident tendency in the human soul to a 
moral finality. Character is soon formed and soon crys- 
tallized. Radical changes are in the natural course of 
flings precluded ; and a man's moral state becomes settled 
and fixed. This is still further confirmed by the analogies 
of this life. We find that our present existence finishes a 
ycle, — closes a distinctly marked period. This earthly 
c^ourse of things does not exist after death. There is a 
change. The old conditions and modes of living perish. 
A.11 earthly pursuits and avocations come to an end. Death 
does most certainly make this crisis in our physical condi- 
tion, and close up forever this one cycle of our lives. 
The law of change gives place now to the law of con- 
stancy. The physical crisis in our existence is but the 
sign of a moral crisis in the condition of the soul. 

The tendency which now encounters opposing obstacles 
— the tendency towards God or away from him — sud- 
denly becomes absolute and exclusive in its character; 
for the consciousness of God at once fills the soul. The 
sense of his presence is the one characteristic feature of 
the eternal life. " Every knee shall bow." Every soul 
yields to God either the grateful adoration of its affections, 
or the painful homage of its moral convictions. Sin is thua 
mastered either in the completeness of its removal or in 



142 EVIDENCES OF CnniSTIANITT. 

the perfection of its punishment. In the cne case it is the 
worship of love, in the other the worship of the con- 
science, — of the conscience that honors the judge and 
condemns the criminal. 

The rewards and the penalties of the future world can 
know no end ; for the religious life is not a trade, where 
virtuous acts bring their fixed equivalents ; nor is an irre- 
ligious life a business, where every crime against heaven is 
noted in a price-current. These retributions are the natu- 
ral results of living, — the natural fruits of the final moral 
condition of the soul as it passes into eternity ; for it is 
not single isolated acts alone, or chiefly, that determine 
one's future destiny, but the moral character in its unity, 
from which all these acts spring. It is the abiding foun- 
tain of sinfulness that sends forth the everlasting streams 
of death. The like is true of the blessedness of heaven. 
It is the continued fruit of a continued divine life. These 
rewards and these punishments are also positive, because 
they are ordained of God^ and are recognized and felt to 
he thus ordained in the consciousness of the saved and 
of the lost. 

Penalty has no more tendency to end the life of sin, or 
the sinful condition of the soul, than reward has any 
power to end a life of holiness, or a holy state of the soul. 
If sin was but an external and superficial habit of the 
man, its own consequences might lead to reform ; but as it 
is a complete break with God, — a central and fontal aver- 
sion to his character, — there can be no self-restorative pro- 
cess by which the sinner self-moved can return to his 
Maker. If sin had its seat in the organism, then it might 
fall away with the dissolution of the body ; but, as it is 
rooted in the affections and in the will, it must survive 



CHRISTIANITT A DIVINR DOCTRINE, 143 

death, and reappear in a more fixed and malignant form. 
Death cannot be our saviour, nor can punishment be our 
restorer to the love and favor of God. All such natural- 
istic conceptions are absolutely foreign to the mind of 
Christ. 

There can, then, be no recovery except by the absolute 
intervention of God himself Of this we have no intimation 
in the teachings of Christ and of his apostles. The gen- 
eral drift of the Scriptures is in direct opposition to any 
such idea. In fact, a second probation would be more un- 
favorable than the first. We cannot argue from the di- 
vine attributes what God must do in such a momentous 
case. There are too many unknown elements in the prob- 
lem, as thus presented, to warrant the conclusion that God 
will interpose. He may not be willing to dishonor hia 
own image in breaking down the freedom of the creature 
The very dignity and worth of man may thus stand in thf 
way of his future recovery. After the rejection of thf 
Son of God, no better ofier of life, and under no bette^ 
conditions, can possibly be made. God's love, too, must 
have supreme regard to his character as supremely holy, 
The difficulties which may press and sadden our souls on 
this awful subject must remain till the light of eternity 
shall dispel them. Of one thing we are sure, and in that 
we can rest, " the Judge of all the earth will do right." 

But we shall make no attempt to look into the future 
world. The solemn fact remains, — we are to commence 
our eternal life hereafter as redeemed from sin, or as con- 
firmed in it. And we know that heaven contains all that 
is good, actual or possible, for the saved ; and that hell em- 
bodies all that is evil, actual or possible, for the lost. And 
we know, too. that the doctrine of restoration is not a doc- 



144 RriDEKCES OF CURISTIANlTr. 

trine of Christianity. One must re.st it, if he can rest it 
anywhere, on the secret purpose of God, — a purpose all 
unknown to man. The only warrant that can be given for 
it is an utterly presumptuous one. 

We have, in this discussion, considered only the essen- 
tial aspects of Christianity as a doctrine. The others are 
purposely omitted, as not necessary in bringing out the 
proof of its divinity. But if now Christianity is found 
to throw light on our destiny, and in some measure to solve 
some of the problems of existence, and to give comfort 
and support to our weary souls, then we have an additional 
evidence of its divine origin and character. 



CHAPTER V. 

CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LAW. 

SECTION FIRST. 
THE NECESSITY OF AN AUTHORITATIVE STANDARD. 

Christianity is a law, as well as a life ; an authori 
tative rule, as well as an inward spiritual power ; a stand 
ard of dutj, as well as a spring of action ; the ideal of 
moral excellence, as well as the growing realization of the 
divine likeness. 

These two aspects of Christianitj do not stand apart 
and opposed. The impulse of divine love is coincident 
with the imperative of divine holiness. The Christ with- 
in our souls is the same as the Christ without us and 
above us. Every joj is a dutj, and every duty a joy. 
The child of God is at the same time the subject of his 
government. 

There may be, somewhere in the universe of God, 
spirits whose morality is purely instinctive ; whose con- 
formity to the Divine Mind is spontaneous and complete ; 
whose surroundings are such as not to furnish any natural 
test of loyalty. The plan of God may be such as does 
lot require any positive trial to awaken them to a fuller 
nelf-consciousness, and so to confirm them in virtue, and 
♦■•hus to lead them through the discipline of probation to a 
higher and broader plane of thought and feeling. Such, 

13 145 



146 EVIDENCES OF CffRISTi!ANJTr, 

however, is not the condition in which the humaii race 
finds itself in its present stage of existence. 

It maj be that hereafter, in the moral history of man, 
the very idea of divine authority may merge itself in the 
free and joyous sense of divine love, so that he will be 
held to his allegiance solely and purely by the attractions 
of the divine character, and by the intrinsic blessedness 
of the divine service. But such is not the case here and 
now. God must, then, reveal himself as our Sovereign as 
well as our Father. 

The consciousness of an Infinite Personal Presence 
arose with the consciousness of self But this original 
possession of our nature shared in the fall of that nature 
The handwriting of God, though not effaced, has been 
greatly obscured by the stains and the blots of human sin. 
This obscuration is, in several points, marked and strik- 
ing. We may here note some of them as they appear in 
the life of our common humanity. 

The most sadly painful of them is the fact that the 
lawgiver is more or less forgotten in his law. It is not 
God who condemns us, but the moral order of the uni- 
verse. It is no longer a personal being, supreme and 
infinite, who punishes the guilty, but only the conscience. 
Thus, in the moral government of the world, the minister 
usurps the prerogatives of the sovereign. The divine 
will is sunk in an impersonal providence. The right, 
and the good, and the beautiful, instead of being the eter- 
nal thoughts and volitions of the divine reason, and so 
the norm and the goal of all human living, are only 
splendid abstractions, — the creations of the soul, — her 
sublimest imaginings, but nothing more. In the physical 
world, also, God is lost in his law, a^d a thousand c^o« 



CHRISTTAiriTY A DWINK LAW. 147 

called secondary agencies separate the soul from the pres- 
ence of its Maker. In this idealism, so cold and so thin, 
there is no fixed rule of life, no standard of moral 
goodness. 

Kindred with this, and at bottom one with it, is another 
no less fatal defect in man's sense of the divine. The 
results of living do not enter the consciousness as the re- 
wards of obedience, or the penalties of disobedience. The 
divine character of law is lost sight of in the very cer- 
tainty of its operations. The soul takes in nothing more 
than the idea of a great, iron-like mechanism, with its 
chain of causes and effects, moving on with a relentless, 
and often crushing power. Thus the soul does not enter 
into any close personal relations with God. But all ex- 
perience shows how little men care for mere threatened 
evils, when these are not the tokens of the crowning 
evil of all, the personal displeasure of an infinite 
God. 

The fact of sin has made, in another respect, the laws 
of nature very inadequate. Her silence or her inarticu- 
late tones on questions where a response is most needed 
and most craved, and her persistent and terrible plain- 
ness of speech where man most seeks for some way of 
escape, — both of these features make natural religion 
the revelation of death, the proclamation of despair- It 
is true all this is not forced on the soul. Men may school 
themselves into indifference, or may delude themselves 
with the hope of something better hereafter. It is worthy 
of note, however, that in such cases all moral earnestness 
was melted away amidst the heat of human ambitions, or 
in the intense pursuit of earthly pleasures. Nothing 
but the voice of authority can silence these doubts, dispel 



148 EVIDBNCBS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

these fears, or recall souls from the indifference of a 
frivolous life. 

Besides, God's natural revelation often lacks the need- 
ful sanctions ; for the results of human character and 
conduct are often delayed ; and often, when they do come, 
they do not, as we have said, enter the consciousness as 
God's appointed rewards or punishments. More than this 
may be affirmed ; they never come in their fulness and in 
their intensity. Yet these are the proper supports and 
guaranties of the divine law. If they are weakened, the 
nerve of that law is gone, and its very idea begins to be 
dissipated. Positive religious hopes or religious fears 
cease to be the springs of action. 

That the Old World needed an ideal is plain to even a 
casual reader of ancient history. Her ablest minds had 
3ither abandoned the hope of reaching the truth, or had 
lost themselves in endless disputes on the nature of vir- 
tue, and the good of life. No school could claim to be 
ihe living church, and no philosopher could assume to be 
an authoritative teacher. Their utterances lacked the 
spirit of inspiration and the tone of realism, so that their 
writings could never be looked on as the standard of truth 
and of duty. They were the chiefs of their respective 
schools, but not the leaders of humanity. In fact, the 
mind of heathendom was broken into fragments; it had 
neither unity, certainty, nor authority. 

The great difficulty, however, was not in nature and in 
providence, but in their interpreters. The chief reason 
why God's signs and symbols were not recognized and 
understood, was that man had put up false lights all 
along the shores of time. All are left responsible, but 
none the less powerless and hopeless; for while the 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LAW. 149 

conscience never errs in its simple axiomatic deliverances, 
it is ever turned aside by ignorance, or passion, or self- 
interest, in applying these first principles to the pursuits 
and to the duties of every-daj life. The world, then, 
needed another light than human reason, and another 
guide than human conscience. That reason must be en- 
lightened, and that conscience quickened, bj a law out of 
and above themselves. 

Christianity, then, must present itself as the one au- 
thoritative rule, the one objective standard, of all human 
duty. Man needs something more than a new life, than 
the partial appropriation of even divine truth. The im- 
pulse of a free life is not the sole constitutive element in 
the Christian character. It has to be met and supple- 
mented by the principle of authority. The convictions 
of the soul cannot safely be followed without reference to 
an infallible guide. Otherwise, religion would degeneratp 
into the weakest sentimentalism. The mystic could jus 
tify his waste of spiritual energy in midnight vigils and 
in useless reveries, and the mere fanatic could pass for a 
hero and a saint. Torquemada was honest in his con- 
victions, and yet applied the instruments of torture in the 
name of Jesus ; and so was Robespierre, and yet he 
worked the guillotine in the assumed interests of humanity. 

The beauty and the worth of a free, spontaneous obedi- 
ence cannot be too highly prized. But, before that state 
is reached, and long before it is consummated, man must 
learn to s\ibmit to authority, and to follow the dictates of 
simple duty, till perfect love has cast out all fear. That 
can never be till the consciousness of self has wholly given 
way to the consciousness of God. The child of God even 
here is ever falling under the discipline of law j and th« 
13* 



150 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

lower motives, legitimate or not, must ever operate in a 
worldly soul ere the higher and nobler ones can come into 
free and full play. 

SECTION SECOND. 

CHRISTIANITY THE IDEAL OP HUMAN LIFE. 

Christianity cannot be incorporated in any code of 
ethics. The attempt to embrace it in a mere list of 
duties, or to mould it into a system of casuistry for all 
possible cases of conscience, would be both impossible and 
undesirable. Nor can even its leading principles be crys- 
tallized into abstract formulas ; for the vital element 
which gives unity and power to them all is lost in the 
very process of separation and reproduction. The fresh 
and delicate beauty of the living organism, with all its 
quickening fragrance, is completely and forever gone when 
spirit and form are thus once forced asunder. 

Yet Christianity, as a law, must have an objective ex- 
istence. The ideal must be real, though it may not be 
actual. If this new divine law cannot be given in any 
compilation of duties, or expressed in any scientific state- 
ment, then it must be embodied in some perfect human 
character and life. It must be more than any prophetic 
utterance, however sublime. It must be more than what can 
be given in cold and dead forms of human speech. Ix 
must be incarnated in a living person, who shall represent 
Dur common humanity, and who shall be the model as 
well as the magnet for all men in all times. 

But more than this is reeded. This life must be a 
divinely human one, mediatory and redemptive in its 
character. It must thus reveal what is peculiar and dis* 



CnniSTIANITY A DIVINE LAW. 151 

tinctive in Christianitj. It must realize in its verj nature 
that God and man are reconciled. It will thus give us 
not a system of mere natural ethics, where there is only 
a development of the moral forces from their normal 
centre, but a system of Christian morals, where there is 
a spiritual growth from the germ of a new redemptive life ; 
where a new and higher type of character becomes the 
blossom and bloom of the new redemptive process. Such 
a theanthropic life must certainly, on its historic side, be 
tied to some one age, and to some one nation, and so must 
have its biographer and its interpreter. Yet Jesus is 
greater than his teachings or his doings, and so greater 
than the evangelic portraiture or the apostolic delineation; 
greater, even, than the church has ever realized in her 
thoughts, or formulated in her creeds, or sung in her dox- 
ologies and hymns of praise. Thus no age in its highest 
representatives will ever go beyond, or come up to, the law 
of God, as rewritten and republished in the life of Jesus. 
In fact, every epoch in human history has found something 
new and fresh and inspiring in his character, suited to its 
changed condition and wants. The ages that are farthest 
off, and that have the widest sweep, will have their centre 
of gravity in Christ. 

The great value of the New Testament is in the fact 
that it gives us the consciousness of Christ. That is pre- 
served in a fixed and final form, and can be approached by 
men of all nations into whose language the written word 
has been translated. We only remark that the Christ- 
consciousness is the fulfilment of the prophetic conscious- 
ness of the Old World. The New Testament is the 
guaranty of the worth and dignity of the Old Testament. 

If it be objected that this method of revealing the 



152 EVIDENCES OP CHRISTIANITY, 

divine will still leaves man in the midst of man^? uncer- 
tainties, we answer, this is but an inseparable accompa- 
niment of our moral freedom, and is in full harmony 
with the facts of our common probation. Besides, any 
painful uncertainty of this kind is itself a part of the pen- 
alty of human guilt, and in part the discipline of divine 
Providence. However, it is sure to grow less and less, as 
one seeks for the truth, and submits his will to the ideal he 
recognizes. 

Thus the form in which the Christian law is given us 
reveals its divine origin. It is no mere compilation of 
commands and prohibitions, but the living exemplar, — the 
personal realization of a perfect human virtue. God lives 
our life that he may fix the type of a divinely human 
character. It is no mere exhibition of the moral abstrac- 
tions of the philosopher. The ideas of the right, of the 
good, and of the beautiful, are, as we have said, living ver- 
ities, whose seat and whose source is in the bosom of God, 
but whose radiance is felt all over the universe, and whose 
power is centred in the person of the God-man. Now, this 
personage did not emerge as a rare and gifted genius out 
of the mass of our common humanity, but came forth of 
his own free will from out of the depths of eternity, as 
the new head and new pattern of a restored and redeemed 
race. 

The contents, as well as the form in which the new law 
is given us, clearly reveal its divinity. It is enough for 
our purpose to indicate some of its leading principles, and 
some of its general applications. 

It begins at the beginning. Religion is made the soul 
of morality. God's nature is viewed as the ground of 
all virtue, and his will as the rule of all duty. There are 



CHRISTIAKITY A DIVINE LAW, 153 

no ultimate truths independent of his reason, and there is 
no ultimate authority outside of his will. The one primal 
personal relation to him makes good all other subordinate 
relations which men hold to their fellow-creatures ; for it 
sanctions and justifies them, penetrates and ennobles them 
all. God's redeeming love to us, and our returning love 
to him, make up that mutual fellowship which is to be the 
regnant principle of the new life, the first requirement 
of the divine law. 

This regnant principle determines the relation which a 
man holds to himself It works in full accord with the 
normal susceptibilities and impulses of our nature. Self- 
love — a love for our true selfhood — is everywhere recog- 
nized and appealed to as a sacred element in our souls, 
and as a legitimate motive power in human life. In this 
region move all our natural hopes and natural fears. 
These presuppose a love for the good for its own sake, and 
are coincident with the purest and loftiest springs of action. 
Our appetites, too, and our passions, are to have their 
natural gratification. The body is not to be the slave of 
the soul any more than its idol or its master. Thus 
there is to be a growth for the whole man, and not a sac- 
rifice of either part of our nature to the other. In this 
way alone one secures a free human development, while a 
mere code of arbitrary rules could at best only create a 
statuesque morality, beautiful it may be, but cold and 
rigid in death. Thus the significancy of man, rather than 
the worth of the citizen, is always insisted on. He is led 
t )wards his ideal, not by emphasizing his rights, but by urg- 
ing home his duties ; not by making him either the mere 
expectant of another world, or the mere tenant of this 
earth, but by making his position amid the glories ot the 



151 EVIDENCBS OF CHRISTIANITY. 

future depend solely on his share in the nobilities of the 

present. 

Christianity regulates the family life. It reaffirms the 
positive law of marriage. The relation of the sexes is 
not left simply to the public conscience, as that may voice 
itself in the Isgislation of the State, but fixed once for all 
by a divine enactment. It thus becomes a religious insti- 
tution as well as a civil contract. The separation of the 
parties can only be justified by a continued neglect, or by 
great cruelty ; while a complete release can only be al- 
lowed when death interposes, or when the crime of the 
ausband or of the wife has defeated the very end of the 
relation itself. Both polygamy and the law of free divorce 
are unchristian : for the first degrades home-life, and the 
iecond renders it insecure, and destroys its sacredness. 

Thus a religious sanction is given to the union of the 
jiexes. All the guaranties of a divine law are thrown 
iround the relation to hallow and to ennoble it. Thus one 
spot on earth is secured, where the fountains of new affec- 
tions may be opened, and where the purest and tenderest 
sympathies may find their fullest and freest scope. When 
the idea of a Christian home is realized, then the aims and 
the interests of husband and of wife blend together in the 
unity of one wedded life ; then love descends from parents 
to their offspring, and ascends in return in equal measure ; 
then the father becomes the priest of God, and all the 
members of his household daily worshippers about the 
family altar; then the mother becomes the loving com- 
forter, and heart-friend and guide of her children. Here 
piety creates and fosters all the domestic virtues. It ia 
Christian gentleness, and patience, and forgiveness which 



CnniSTIANITY A DIVTNE LAW. 15S 

make the family the nursery of the church, the bond of 
society, and the type of heaven. 

Christianity gives the law to the social life. The indi- 
vidual cannot live alone and yet be a complete man ; nor 
can he shut himself up within the narrow circle of hia 
own dwelling without dwarfing his own nature. He is 
born a member of a wider community, and can only attain 
to his full stature in free intercourse with his fellows. He 
cannot, under the delusive pretext of a more entire conse- 
cration to God, withdraw from society. God has made us 
for each other as well as for himself He will not in any 
exclusive way appropriate all our affections and all our ser- 
vices, for he is supremely unselfish. He accepts a pure 
communion with our fellows as a part of the homage paid 
to himself. It is only when we are in the closest fellow- 
ship with the children of God that we are nearest to the 
heart of our common Fatlier. Religion is thus to pervade 
and not to absorb our lives. It is to penetrate our affec- 
tions and our activities, and not to break down any side of 
our nature. Thus the old monk always lacked symmetry 
of Christian character. In spite of his raptures, his prac- 
tical piety was often fierce and vindictive. He was the 
leader in many a cruel persecution. Thus his ferocious 
partisanship not unfrequently took the place of a gentle, 
loving, and persistent devotion to Christ ; and his arrogant 
assumption of a higher morality passed for the utter re- 
nunciation of a godless world. 

Every man has his providential position in society. 
This will change as his surroundings change ; as the laws 
)f life, or as his own free resolves, may determine. He 
must accept that changing lot, whatever it may be. If he 
has failed to improve his condition, he has no one to blame 



156 EVIVENCES OF CHRTSTTANITT. 

but himself. It was his privilege and his duty to make 

the most of himself, and the most of all his opportunities. 
Yet even here all idle regret is opposed to that quiet 
heroism which patiently waits and works and conquers. 
He is to take special care that his trials are not of his own 
creation, — the pure product of his own unrest : hut he 
is to see that they are only the real visitations of an 
unseen Providence. And while he accepts his appointed 
lot, and submits to the discipline of life, he is ever to open 
his soul gratefully to every innocent pleasure which may 
be given him, and to every nobler joy which may be 
breathed upon him from a spiritual world. Christianity 
thus requires a man to trust to no chance, and to yield 
to no necessiify, but to accept the plan of life which God 
has mapped out for him. 

Every man must have a calling. That vocation is indi- 
cated by his character, and conditioned by Providence 
The natural gifts, directed and developed by all the oppor- 
tunities and influences under which one is born and bred. 
are to determine that calling. Every one, in the light of 
a true self-knowledge, is to choose his proper field of labor. 
As he moves in that appointed sphere of life, he be- 
comes a natural coworker with God : and as he departs from 
it and fails to meet his responsibilities, he can only become 
one of the natural but unconscious instruments in the 
accomplishment of the divine purpose. These gifts of 
nature are the basis of the gifts of grace. Thus Paul 
was " called from his mother's womb," and thus the gran- 
deur of Christ's mission was in accordance with, and mor- 
ally necessitated by, the grandeur of his character. 

The ultimate object of every calling is to educate the 
soul ; to bring into use all the energies and endowments 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LAW. 157 

of our natures ; to attain to that typical symmetry of char- 
acter which is the law of every individual life ; — r in brief, 
to grow into a conformity with God. But the immediate 
object of the majority of men must be to accumulate 
wealth, as a means of higher culture and of a wider be- 
nevolence; for the goods of life are not to be despised, 
but to be coveted, gratefully received, and wisely em- 
ployed. Every abandonment of them is immoral'; for it 
makes poverty a virtue, a mere outward condition the sav- 
ing panacea of life, and encourages personal pride under 
the garb of humility. Every one is entitled to the full 
avails of his own talent and of his own labor. He may give 
what his conscience dictates, but he can never abandon his 
rights in property without making war on Providence. 
All arbitrary attempts to remodel society so as to secure a 
community of goods are both futile and wrong ; for they 
are vain efforts to correct the radical defect of selfishness by 
balancing one of its forms against another, even annulling 
in this process of social reconstruction the sanctity and the 
obligations of the family life. 

But every pursuit and every profession must be regu- 
lated by a life in God and a life for God. It is this ruling 
principle which is finally to determine whether any busi- 
ness is a legitimate one or not. It is this which fixes the 
morals of trade ; which decides the duties of the employer 
and of the employed ; which regulates the relations of capital 
to labor : and, in short, which makes political economy a 
part of the system of Christian ethics. Thus this one su- 
preme and dominating pursuit of life, this regnant aim to 
conform one's self to the divinely human life of the Son of 
God, is to subordinate and to direct every earthly employ 
ment and every human vocation. 
U 



158 EVIDENCES OF CnUlSTIANITT. 

But the broader aspects of society — its humanitarian 
side — must all come under this Christian principle of 
redeeming love. Self-sacrifice is to be the norm of the 
new life. It is to show itself in the daily interchange of 
thought and of feeling with our neighbors ; in sympathy 
with the sad and sorrowing ; in charity to the poor ; in 
educating the ignorant ; in reclaiming the vicious ; in en- 
couraging the reformed ; in sustaining every good man and 
every good cause ; in ministering to the sick and to the 
dying ; in seeking in every right way to make others bet- 
ter and wiser than they are ; and, above all, in bringing all 
souls back again into the love and fellowship of God. If 
any feeling of pride, or any charm of the world, or any 
of its entanglements, stand in the way of such a consecra- 
tion, then they must give place; for to crucify our lower 
.selves in doing good is the condition of all heroic living, 
[f sufferings stand in our path, and even if death is in 
the clear line of duty, these only bring the cross and the 
crown near together, and show the vicarious nature of the 
Christian life. 

Where the claims of the community are too great to be 
met by personal individual action alone, then good men 
are to unite to advance every great and good cause. Here 
there is room for the best and the most persistent efforts 
of all our philanthropic societies. Men must associate to 
inaugurate and carry on the various social reforms of the 
age in which they live. They must found scliools, when- 
ever the state fails to establish them ; they must erect the 
asylum and ihe hospital for all the unfortunate classes 
of our fellow-beings; and they must scatter the seeds of 
light and truth all over the wide world. 

No man, however, is to do good by proxy when he can 



CHRISTIAKITl A DIVINB LAW, 159 

do it directly and personallj^ There is always a loss to 
the individual, just because his individuality is lost in the 
society of which he is a member. Yet no great evil can 
be adequately met except by associated action. 

But the law of duty respects our entire life-work. It 
does not require an immediate exhaustion of our strength 
in any single effort. It is only on rare occasions, when the 
hour of extreme self-sacrifice, or, possibly, of martyrdom, 
has come, that this expenditure of life-forces can be de- 
manded. We are ever to economize and treasure up all 
our sources of power in order to use them wisely and well. 
There must, then, be rest and diversion. There must be 
innocent amusement, and seasons of relaxation and of re- 
pose. Yet we are never to reverse the divine order, and 
make these amusements the very sources of our inmost 
life, and change our whole existence into a round of mere 
enjoyments. Nor are we to accept such diversions as 
have irreligious associations or vicious tendencies. 

But one more point needs here to be briefly noticed. 
Christianity determines the duties of the citizen. It rec- 
ognizes the social status of any people, in its several stages 
of progress, as providential. It accepts the fact that out of 
this race life, or national life, grows a legitimate govern- 
ment ; also the attendant fact, that every such government 
must in its form be more or less provisional or transitory. 
Thus Christianity recognizes national revolutions as part 
of the order of Providence. But its attitude is not nega- 
tive, but positive. It does undoubtedly help society, and 
so government, towards that ideal state, when the right 
of the individual shall be fully recognized, and when the 
principles of virtue shall reign in the halls of our legisla« 
ture as fully as in the family circle. 



160 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

The first duty it enjoins is obedience to the civil au« 
thoritj. Everj man is to submit to the powers that be, 
whether their administration is wise and good, or foolish and 
vicious. It is onlj when there is a conflict between hia 
allegiance to God and his loyalty to the government that 
the citizen is to obey the higher law ; for this is the cen- 
tral duty he owes to both himself and his Maker. When- 
ever the rights of the conscience are infringed on, then 
he is quietly to refuse obedience, and to accept the conse- 
quences, be they what they may. 

But whenever the government fails to answer the very 
end for which it was created, so that social order exists in 
name but not in reality, then a revolution, even though it 
must be a violent one, is inevitable. It is only a question 
of time. The necessities of the community demand a radi- 
cal change. It becomes the duty of every good man to 
take part in it, and so to lessen as far as may be the inev 
itable evils of an appeal to arms. But even here the end 
must be plainly attainable, and that end must be not sim 
ply the overthrow of a tyrant or of a bad government, but 
the establishment of a good one in its place; for anarchy 
is worse than tyranny, and Christianity cannot sanction ar 
idle waste of human life. 

It cannot be doubted that Christianity enjoins patriot- 
ism ; but it is certain that it subordinates the love of 
country to the love of man. Yet, as every great nation has 
its mission, so a love on the part of the citizen for the land 
of his birth or of his adoption harmonizes with his love of 
humanity, and is an imperative Christian duty. It is, 
however, a false patriotism, as it is a false principle of po- 
litical economy, to suppose that the real interests of oui 
country can be promoted at the expense of any other 



CHStSTIANITY A DTVINE LAW, 161 

Christianity, as well as social science, requires that we 
hold to the fraternity of nations and the brotherhood of 
man. 

We may now compare the Christian ideal with that 
given in the writings of the stoics. We refer to these 
ancient moralists, because they were the best representa- 
tives of the Old World. They lived through the first cen- 
turies of the Christian era, and so enjoyed the fruit of the 
old culture, and possibly breathed somewhat the rising 
Christian atmosphere. Now, we shall find very many no- 
ble precepts, which seem to accord with those of Christ 
and his apostles. But, if they be allowed such an inter- 
pretation, they show that these moralists had come in con- 
tact with currents of thought and of feeling higher than 
the schools to which they belonged, and foreign to the 
spirit of the system which they themselves taught. If, 
however, we interpret their loftiest sentiments by the gov- 
erning idea and tone of their philosophy, we shall con- 
clude that there was a striking agreement and a striking 
contrast, — an agreement in form and appearance, but a 
contrast in spirit and in substance. None of the stoics 
made the will of a personal God the rule of duty, and 
supreme love to him the spring of all moral living. 

Christianity recognizes religion as the very life of mo- 
rality. They always blend together in the unity of a per- 
fect human character ; for piety without morality is mere 
sentimentalism, and morality without piety is a cold and 
dead legalism, rising in some natures to an atheistic deifi- 
cation of self. Often the disciple of Zeno seems, in de- 
tached sentences, to approach the same view ; but it is an 

approach only in appearance. Let us take an example 
14» 



162 EVIDENCES OF CBRISTIANITT* 

from Epictetus. He affirms that " no man is good with- 
out God." This sounds apostolic. But he adds, "In 
everj good man there dwells — what God is uncer- 
tain." Here the form of statement is polytheistic, and 
the idea savors of naturalism or pantheism. The soul is 
conceived of as a mode of the devine consciousness. The per- 
sonality of God is lost in a godless self-worship. The idea 
of the constant presence of God was onlj the notion that 
one should ever keep company with his better and diviner 
self 

The prayer given by this eminent moralist contrasts 
strikingly with that propounded by our Lord. ' ' Make 
use of me as Thou wilt. ... I refuse nothing which seems 
good to Thee." Now mark the opposition in spirit and 
temper between the two, as seen in the omission here indi- 
cated. We give the omitted words : " I am of the same 
mind, I am one with Thee." How such arrogance alters 
the whole import of the first part of the prayer, and 
in what antagonism it stands to the humble petition, 
" Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors " ! In 
fact, the idea of prayer was alien to the stoical system. 
Epictetus affirms that "the cry for mercy was pitiful,'' 
and that " prayer is an attempt to corrupt your judge and 
to silence your adviser." 

The only providence the stoic believed in, whatever 
isolated expressions might show to the contrary, was the 
sufficiency of his own reason, and the supremacy of his 
own will. He was his own consoler, counsellor, and 
guide. All that he submitted to was unimportant in life. 
Nothing could move his will or dethrone his reason. He 
had no anxiety about himself, or for his family, or for hia 
friends, or for his country. Nothing which might befall 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE LAW. 163 

him or them was to give him the slightest trouble. He 
was ready to labor for them and to care for them, but not 
at the cost of any inward disquiet. As one of the school 
said : " It is better that the child should be bad than that 
you should be unhappy." Thus Seneca allowed of clem- 
ency, but denied compassion ; commanded kindness, but for- 
bade sympathy ; he will wipe away the tears of others, but 
shed none himself Thus there could be no conscious re- 
lation to a loving Father, no subduing and chastening of 
human passions, no real fellow-feeling and sympathy with 
others, no great joy, no inspiring hope, no chance for any- 
thing beautiful in character or divinely heroic in suffer- 
ing. The stoic, then, knows no providence but what 
comes from that universal reason of which he is a part and 
I parcel, and he submits only to what he regards as the 
i^eriest accidents of life. Self-assertion is the law of his 
existence; with the Christian it is self-abandonment. 
Self-centred and defiant, the stoic learns only the lesson 
of repression; while the Christian finds his self-reliance 
guaranteed in his dependence on God, and gladly follows 
the leadings of his providence in a life of submission, of 
aspiration, and of entire self-consecration. 

Paul and Seneca were in Rome at the same time; 
both taught the duty of forgiveness of injuries, yet on 
what different grounds and in what a different spirit ! The 
philosopher insisted on the doctrine, because the wise man 
knows that his enemy can only touch the accidents of life. 
One's real self is beyond and above the reach of his mal- 
ice. In fact, there is nothing to be forgiven. Besides, it 
is unworthy of a man to resent an injury. He cannot stoop 
so low as to be vindictive, or to allow himself to be dis- 
turbed by what is not of the slightest moment, or of the 



164 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

smallest consequence to his true interests. It is for him to 
humiliate his enemy by the calmness and coldness of his 
neglect and indifference. With the apostle this doctrine 
rested on another basis, and breathed another spirit. The 
feeling of forgiveness carried with it the sense of sin, and 
the sense of reconciliation. It was the restoration of a 
lost fellowship. It was grounded on the mutual relations 
of men to each other as creatures and as sinners, and their 
common dependence on one and the same Saviour. Both 
parties must cherish the spirit of forgiveness, as they hoped 
to be forgiven by their Lord in heaven. The stoic par- 
doned in pride, in contempt, and at a distance. The 
Christian forgave in love, and in fellowship, and in the 
hope of a richer and sweeter union hereafter. 

We may instance one more point of comparison, — the 
view of the essential equality of all men. The stoic was 
constantly proclaiming the fact that all men were "citi- 
zens of the world." Man partook of the divine nature, 
and had a real kinship with God. In the Christian sys- 
tem this truth was supplemented by others, namely, that 
all partook of a common creaturehood, and of a common 
sinfulness. The first by itself satisfies human pride, whilf> 
the other secured human love and sympathy. The one 
harmonized with the fact of a common aspiration, and the 
other with the need of a common redemption. The reali- 
ties of this life have sanctioned the fuller and clearer idea 
of the Christian faith. 

If there are any systems of morals of a lofty style and 
character held by modern sceptics, we are to bear in mind 
how largely these very systems have been indebted to 
Christian ideas and institutions. They have grown and 
bloomed under tiie light and heat, under the rain and 



CBRISTlANtTY A DIVINB LAW. 165 

dews, of a Christian civilization. What is best in them is 
the product of a Christian age, and so gives an unwilling 
testimonj to the loftiness and purity of the Christian re- 
ligion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CHRISTIANITY A DIYINE KINGDOM. 

SECTION FIRST. 

THE IDEA OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Christianity must issue in a religious societj. The 
church must grow out of Christ ; for it is the person of 
Jesus, and not anj doctrinal idea, which is fontal and 
central in the religion he founded. He came not to 
establish a school, but a kingdom, — not to philosophize, 
but to redeem, — not to propagate a dogma, but to gather 
about himself believers in his person, and subjects to his 
will. He came to win souls from out of the mass of hu- 
manity, and to assimilate to himself and to each other a 
Christ-like community. 

The religion of Jesus is historical in its character. It 
is a revelation for the ages ; a life to be diffused through 
humanity ; and a common worship to be rendered by all 
men. It can thus fully realize itself only in a divine 
kingdom. This new spiritual fellowship with God neces- 
sitates a new communion of his people, and seeks for a 
fixed visible embodiment in the life and history of the 
race. 

The church, then, is not an appendage, or an instrumen- 
tality, or even an inseparable accompaniment of the Chris- 
tian religion. It is not a temporary scaffolding for the 

166 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINB KINGDOM, 167 

erection of the temple of truth. It is not an establish- 
ment which our transient needs have forced on the Founder 
of the new faith, or which his followers ha^^e substituted 
in place of the original idea and plan of their Master. 
It is not a mere temporary affair; for even the end of 
human probation marks not the abolition of the church, 
but its perfection ; not its dissolution, but its transfigura- 
tion. It is in its essential features, then, an integral part 
of Christianity itself It is the conscious living presence 
of Christ incarnated in the souls of men. The soul and 
body of Christianity cannot be separated without the 
practical extinction of the Christian religion itself. 

It is true every age will stamp itself on the church. 
It can furnish, however, only the varying and the transient 
elements in its organic life. That life has its source ir 
Christ, and its continued growth from his abiding pres- 
ence ; and all its radically distinctive features are but the 
impress of his person and of his character, and the memo- 
rial of his redeeming work, as that is given in the records 
of his earliest disciples and of his chosen apostles. The 
manners, and habits, and customs, and institutions, and 
prevailing ideas of any local community, where any par- 
ticular organization has been planted, may modify its 
worship, and may vary its modes and methods of activity, 
but cannot legitimately alter its original and essential 
type. 

The constitutive elements of every complete Christian 
church are few and simple. They are the following : 
spiritual life derived from Christ ; or, stated in a more con- 
crete form, souls in living fellowship with Christ and each 
other ; symbols to express, on the one hand, the origin and 
continuance of that fellowship, and, on the other, the 



168 BVWBNCES OF CnRISTIANITT. 

great facts in the life of Jesus ; a ministry to administei 

those ordinances and to proclaim the truths thej embody; 
and a stated and consecrated day of worship, the Chris- 
tian Sabbatli. These are the constituent factors and the 
determining principles in the constitution of the church. 
They are essential to its perfection. They cannot be 
changed or modified or obscured by any rightful author- 
ity in or out of the society of Jesus. Nothing can be 
taken from them or placed on a level with them. All 
other church customs or usages are without any positive 
divine sanction, as they are without support in the universal 
needs and convictions of humanity. They can rest only 
on the tastes and judgments of limited classes or nation- 
alities, and are supported on the ground of traditional 
associations, or justified as a matter of expediency. But 
whatever be their value, and however large a sufirage 
they may command, they can never rise to the authority 
and to the dignity of laws in the kingdom of God. 

The relative importance of these several factors is 
indicated in the order in which we have given them. 
Individual souls, coming to a full moral consciousness by 
a conscious union with their great Helper, are made the 
units of power in the commonwealth of Christ. Thug 
the personal will, spiritual and transcendent in its char- 
acter, binds and holds together the entire community. It 
is coincident with the collective will of the society. Thus 
are secured the divine notes of spirituality, unity, and uni- 
versality. 

But the Christ of the church — this transcendent per- 
sonal presence and power — is ever new and ever fresh. It 
can never die out. Human interests and subjective ideaSj 
and all earthly establishments founded upon these, are 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE KINGDOM, 169 

subject to the law of change. Here alone we have both 

stability and growth ; stability, because the same eternal 
self-consciousness rules and reio-ns throuojh the entire life 
of the church ; growth, because its sources are as mani- 
fold as our wants, and as exhaustless as eternity itself. 
Thus we have the marks of immutability without immo- 
bility, or the great divine notes of permanency and devel- 
opment. 

If families held this fundamental relation, the responsi- 
bilities of each soul would be transferred to his represen- 
tative, and the principle of individualism would be merged 
into that of nationalism, and the new community founded 
by Christ would tend to become a state establishment. 

The common life thus created must find a common ex- 
pression ; must embody itself in some definite, fixed forms. 
That life stands related to the great historic verities in 
the person and character of Christ. It is only as thus 
symbolized that it can rise above the changing manifesta- 
tions of different ages, and voice the aspirations of a new 
humanity. The prayers of the individual and the creeds 
of communities may vary with the changes of culture and 
of language ; but in these symbolic forms and acts we 
have one universal worship and one universal faith. 
These representative signs point to the deed-act of God 
without us, — the objective fact of redemption ; and to the 
deed-act of God within us, — the subjective fact of recon- 
ciliation. They thus have a special worth and significance, 
and they cannot be altered without more or less obscuring 
their divine intent and meaning. They thus grow out 
of the very heart of our religion, and so lose the appear- 
ince of arbitrariness. They represent in a natural manner 
*;he mode of origin and the law of growth of the Chris- 
15 



170 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTJAmTT, 

tian life. It is not possible for even the imagination to 
conceive of any other forms which would express equally 
well the distinctive ideas which they were designed to 
reveal. Thus Baptism denotes a radical change in the 
moral character by union with Christ, — a death to sin, 
and a risiog to holiness by fellowship with a dying and 
living Redeemer. The Lord's Supper naturally follows 
the Lord's Baptism, and signifies the continuance of the 
new life, by a continued fellowship with a crucified and 
risen Saviour. These ordinances help to settle the organi- 
zation of every Christian society, and give, in fixed forms, 
the one unalterable and universal creed of its Founder. 

Subordinate to these elements, in the constitution 
of the church, is the Christian ministry. Such an order 
of oflSce-bearers and teachers did, without doubt, enter 
into the plan of Christ, and is thus essential to the per- 
fection of his commonwealth. It is true all the communi- 
cants are kings and priests unto God, and the rights of 
kingship and of priesthood are of paramount importance. 
But yet the kingly graces and priestly gifts greatly vary 
in different members, and so mark their several churchly 
callings, and their respective spheres of Christian labor. 
Now, whenever these higher endowments are marked 
and special, they qualify their possessors for the special 
work of the Christian ministry. The character deter- 
mines the vocation. This divine call is sure to come to 
the consciousness of the individual, and to awaken within 
him a sense of his true destination. It will, in time, 
meet with a response in the body of the church, and can 
justly claim a formal and authoritative recognition on the 
part of the clergy. The ordination is only a public 
acknowledgment of a divine vocation. It remains for 



CHRISTIANITY A B1V1NB KINGDOM. 171 

each separate community to determine what class of min- 
isterial gifts best suit its peculiar wants and surroundings. 
It belongs to the spiritual office to preach the gospel, to 
administer the ordinances, and to recognize those whom 
God has called into its ranks. These duties and privi- 
leges are naturally co-ordinate, and leave no room for any 
other great spiritual duties to be performed by any other 
distinctive office. The temporalities of each local com- 
munity must be assigned to an office local in its character 
and in its authority. The apostolate has passed away ; 
but the pastorate remains. The mission of the first was 
extraordinary ; for, as inspired teachers, and the authori- 
tative gaides of the universal church, they could have 
no successors ; but the office of the second must remain 
till the great Master of both apostle and pastor shall 
come a second time, at the close of our probation. 

The last great distinctive element in a perfect church is 
the day of public Christian worship. It is the birthday 
of the kingdom of Christ, — the day of the resurrection, 
and of redemption. It is destined to become the great 
rest day of a new humanity. It is a necessity of the 
church, and so an outgrowth of Christianity itself The 
patriarchal dispensation had its day, — the day of crea- 
tion. But the theophany was abolished by being fulfilled 
in the theocracy ; and so the Jewish economy enlarged 
the idea of the ancient Sabbath. It had its day, — the 
day of national deliverance. But these partial and 
transitional revelations were, in their essential principles, 
gathered up in the new theocracy, — the spiritual, and 
universal, and final kingdom, founded by the Son of God. 
The Christian church must have its oft-recurring day of 
jubilee, — the one fixed season of praise for God's recon^ 



172 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

ciliation to man, and of prayer for man's reconciliation to 
God. It is the great memorial daj of Christ's victory over 
death, and so the only fit stated occasion Avhen the grand 
realities of his redemptive work can be presented to the 
world, and when the final issues of this probationary life 
can be urged home on the souls of men. 

A church without a spiritual membership lacks a 
divine life ; without its proper distinctive symbols, a real 
objectivity ; without a ministry, a missionary zeal and an 
aggressive power ; without a Sabbath, the position of in- 
€uence and of authority in the world ; and without, as we 
nave elsewhere intimated, a divine law-book, it lacks 
purity and stability of Christian doctrine. 

Every society thus organized is a representative of the 
divine kingdom, and is responsible to its great Head and 
Founder. It has all the privileges and all the obliga- 
tions, all the rights and all the duties, which belong to 
the new theocratic empire established by Christ. Neither 
antiquity, nor numbers, nor wealth, nor culture, nor real 
or fancied superior gifts, nor geographical or national 
position, can alter the official equality of the churches, or 
give to any one of them an ecclesiastical pre-eminence. 

These several Christian communities, however numer- 
ous and however divergent in the points we have just 
noted, are bound together by the closest ties. They all 
have '-one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." There is 
mutual fellowship in all the essentials of a common belief. 
Membership in any one church secures the same in every 
other. The vote of admission is only a vote of confidence 
in the profession of a disciple ; and the letter of dismission 
has no value except as the credentiah of one's mei <ber- 
ship. The exclusion from any one visible church $ an 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE KINGDOM, 173 

exclusion from all of them ; for the qualifications for enter- 
ing the kingdom of God, and the grounds for exclusion, 
are the same, everywhere and always. The organic law 
has been fixed, once and forever, bj Christ himself. 

These several societies, acting separately or collectively, 
may create agencies, or found institutions, for the promo- 
tion of any moral or religious end whatever. But the 
dependent bodies hold a less central position in the evan- 
gelization of the world than the church ; and their relation 
to its spiritual Head is less direct and immediate than 
that of the society he has founded. Their work, too, is 
to be outside of what is distinctive and peculiar in the 
church organization. The men who lead them, or fill 
their offices, have no ecclesiastical prerogatives whatever. 
There is room even for associations, and conventions, and 
councils, made up of messengers, or composed of Christian 
men voluntarily assembling for Christian purposes. Such 
are inevitable, where the power of the church comes in 
conflict with the forces of an alien and godless world 
The churches remain then in their integrity, incarnating 
the life of their common Lord, mutually dependent on 
his invisible presence, and inwardly united by a commop 
spirit, a common belief, a common worship, and a common 
work. 

This divine idea of a Christian church has been only 
partially realized. The plan of Christ has been more or 
less departed from by his professed disciples. The princi- 
ples of his kingdom have been . obscured or modified, or 
their relative importance has been misapprehended, and 
some one has been unduly emphasized and exaggerated at 
the expense of the others. In the midst of such antago- 
nisms, there have sprung up diverging denominations and 



174 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT. 

opposing sects in Christendom. But these two facts of 
modern history loom up before us, and challenge contra- 
diction : One is, that the points in which the Christian 
churches of every name agree are immeasurably more im- 
portant than the point or points in which they differ. 
The other is, that there is a growing unity of spirit 
among them, and a growing friendly co-operation in the 
work of redeeming a lost world. These two facts indicate 
an approach to the ideal of Jesus. 

The evidence of this view is to be found, not so much 
\n written creeds, or in the polemic works of theologians, 
as in the freer and often profounder utterances of those 
men who may justly be regarded as the representatives of 
modern Christianity, — the foremost men of the Christian 
|)ulpit and of the Christian press. 



SECTION SECOND. 

THE VALUE OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 

Christianity, viewed as a philosophy, must ever hold 
a central place in the history of opinion, as Jesus is the 
profoundest of all religious philosophers. 

But if his religion had been only a philosophy, having 
its seat alone in the heart and mind of his disciples, it 
would have been a splendid failure ; for the individual 
man is not a tenant of the invisible and ideal world alone, 
and so cannot sustain himself in any such isolation. He 
cannot walk alone on any such plane of thought and of feeL 
ing. At such an elevation the air is too cold and too rare, 
and all life is too meagre and stunted, for the soul to find a 
permanent resting-place. The individual is not great enough 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINE KINGDOM. 17S 

to constitute, in his own separate personality, the church 
of God. He needs the sympathy and the support of his 
fellows, as truly as of his God. He obtains, in fact, the 
one, in a great measure, by means of the other. The 
society, in its organized capacity, cannot as easily fall 
away from its proper vocation, as the separate individuals 
which make up its membership ; for whenever and wherev- 
er it meets, it does so in the presence of grand and ever- 
lasting realities, and in the consciousness of great memo- 
ries and great hopes ; and it cannot well absolutely lose 
sight of its own lofty ideals. Its very attitude before the 
world, and its very worship reacting on its faith, and its 
ordained ministry, are conservative and educative in their 
nature. Nor can an unbelieving community ever be 
saved by the chance influence of the secret disciples of 
our Lord. The seeds of life cannot be trusted to the cur- 
rents and the tides of varying human opinions. The 
winds of heaven do indeed carry the life-germs of many a 
flower, and scatter them far and wide ; and many a soul is 
made to rejoice in their beauty and fragrance. But the 
great world, petrified in death, is to be quickened and won 
to God by a religion that shall organize itself, and be an 
abiding and living memorial of his presence, and be posi- 
tive and aggressive in its spirit and in its movements. 

The plan of Christ looked to something more potent than 
the cold and dead categories of rational and moral princi- 
ples. He founded no academy, and established no republic 
of letters, but a spiritual empire, and put its divine origin 
to the severest ordeal and to the most practical of all pos- 
sible tests, — the test of general necessity and utility. If 
the church of Christ is Utopian in its character, then its 
founder was a dreamer ; but if it is the realization, mor« 



176 EVIDENCBS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

or less complete, of the reign of God in fallen buma. 

souls, then he is the message and the messenger of heaven 
This will appear when we come to consider Christianity aa 
a power in human society. But the ground and the pledge 
of that power may be given in this connection. 

The organization is based on the common origin, the 
common nature, and the common destiny of the race. The 
bond of association is of the broadest possible kind. There 
is no institution or community with which it can be com- 
pared. Brokers have their boards ; merchants their 
guilds ; lawyers their inns ; savants their academies ; so- 
cialists their communities ; masons their lodges ; literary men 
their clubs and secret societies ; working men their trades- 
unions; and the members of any one race or nation have 
their separate state associations ; but humanity has but one 
and the same home for all souls. Thus the church is not 
for the select few, distinguished by nobility of descent, or 
ennobled by talent or learning, or favored by rich natural 
endowments of head or heart, or even rendered famous by 
great discoveries or by heroic achievements. It is in no 
respect and in no direction exclusive and aristocratic in it? 
character. The church alone is the one universal empire. 
— the one kingdom of God on earth, into which all the 
members of the human family may enter, and enter in the 
same way and on the same footing, and in which they may 
find an enduring satisfaction and an inward and permanent 
repose. 

But human nature has lost its original harmonies. Man 
in his fall from God has fallen away both from his true 
self and from his fellow. The great human sympathies no 
longer well up and overflow, and thus bind together all 
Bouk of the most diverse cultures into one common broth* 



CBRISTIAmTY A DIVINE KIKODOM, 177 

erhoad. Thus the race in its present condition, false to its 
true race-life, cannot afford an adequate basis for a holy 
catholic church. That church must rest on a humanity, 
not restored^ for that is impossible, but recreated^ — ad- 
vanced towards a higher and purer ideal, remoulded after 
the likeness of its new Head, and gathered into a new and 
higher unity under the lead of its new Representative. 

The church makes its appeal to what is central in our 
nature, — to the religious susceptibilities and capacities of 
the human soul. Thus it is not a great communistic associ- 
ation, where one works from the surface of human life to- 
wards its centre, and where, too, every form of selfishness 
is sought to be balanced by some counter selfish tendency. 
Such a society may for a time secure the results of asso- 
ciated labor, but it cannot long survive the inherent weak- 
ness of its very constitution. It sacrifices the spiritual 
elements in the nature of man, clouding his conscience, be- 
littling his aspirations, effacing his finer and more delicate 
sensibilities, and taking away the very possibility of a con- 
secrated and unselfish life. At best it can only be local 
and temporary in its character. It can never make itself 
universal. All such plans and methods of social regenera- 
tion are quite foreign and antagonistic to the idea and to 
the aims of the kingdom of God. The plan of Christ, 
unique and original as it is, is alone adapted to meet the 
exigencies of the case. 

Nor is the church a general moral reform society. Its 
work is deeper and wider than the eradicating of any form 
of social evil, or even the uprooting of all the great ills and 
wrongs of human history. It begins at the origin of all 
human woes, and seeks to restore man to his fellowship 
with God, and to make him worthj of that communioii, 



178 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITT. 

In such a renewal, the feeling of a common relationship and 

kinship is called into a new and fresh life, and man is thus 
reconciled both to himself and to his fellows. Thus Christ 
grounds his kingdom on the broad instincts and aspirations 
of humanity ; on the grand possibilities which make man 
capable of redemption ; on what is fontal in his nature, as 
that nature is quickened and raised to a higher plane of 
life by the indwelling of the Spirit of God. 

The idea of such a regenerated and regenerating society 
was not reached by a philosophic investigation into the 
essential elements of man's nature ; nor by a careful and 
laborious induction of historical data ; nor was it borne to 
the author by the advancing opinions of his day. It was 
apprehended at once without effort, and without even the 
surprise and the glow of joy at a great discovery, and ap- 
|)rehended, too, in its fulness and in its grandeur. Placed 
hj his origin and destiny in the line of the old Hebrew 
prophets, and familiar with their theocratic ideas, Jesus real- 
ized in thought and in act, in his very person and work, 
the new kingdom of God. It was his life-thought and life- 
deed, growing with the growth of his divinely-human 
consciousness. All other founders of religious institutions 
have shown that they were but leaders of sects, and that 
their creations were but the reflections of the age in which 
they lived, without the notes of originality, universality, 
perpetuity, and sanctity. 

But the plan of a divine society simply presents Jesus 
as the first of idealists ; as a genius inspired by the breath 
of a better world, and revelling in schemes whose match- 
less grandeur and goodness made them all the more vis- 
ionary. Now Christ was a realist, and that, too, in his 
highest thought and in his loftiest purpose. He had no 



CHRTSTIANITY A DIVINE KINGDOM, 179 

visions; lie did not live in his imaginations, but in the 
world of spiritual realities. He brings with him the veri- 
ties of that world into the actualities of this life. In him 
alone thej harmonize and make the rhythm of his won- 
drously human character. His ideas enter into history 
because they are realized in a life which is in no sense a 
failure. He will execute his plan because his very living 
presence in human consciousness is the ground and pledge 
and beginning of that execution. 

But he accepts all the issues of his career, as fully as he 
recognizes its moral necessity ; and he apprehends all its 
difficulties, as clearly as he looks forward to the joy and the 
success which are to crown its goal. He does not succumb 
to the obstacles which oppose his path by sacrificing his 
principles in order to secure a nominal triumph ; nor does 
he ignore them by presenting an impracticable scheme of 
life. He begins where he finds man, opens to his view the 
truths nearest to his wants, and presents the subordinate 
motives till the higher springs of action are formed in his 
soul. He thus leads man, in the only way in which he can 
bo led, towards his true destination. 

But how shall Christ make his church a living organiza- 
tion ? How can he save it from being a mere dead estab- 
lishment, to be sustained only by the civil government or 
by the necessities of social life, or by the appliances of art, 
or by the genius of its leaders, or by the vague longings of 
our religious nature, or by that party devotion whose very 
intensity serves to hide from the consciousness the utter 
selfishness of its character ? Now Christ presents himself 
as the source of its life and as the principle of its growth. 
It is not the memory of the name and work of Jesus which 
is to be the inspiring bond of the new association, but his 



180 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

own real presence in the souls of its members. It is 
Christ himself, with all the gar^iered treasures of Calvary, 
who is the source of all its vitality. Thus no regenerat- 
ing power can be evolved from unregenerated natures, and 
no spiritual efficiency can be imparted to any outward rite, 
by whatever formula it may be accompanied. The symbol 
has its place as the memorial of great facts, as the mirror 
of great truths, and as the pledge of the glories of a future 
and invisible world. It is the truth, whether thus symbol- 
ized, or crystallized in the form of the inspired word, or 
given from the lips of the Christian minister, or brought 
home to the soul in the providence of God, which is the 
instrumentality that Christ uses in order to attach men 
to himself, and to enter into fellowship with his people. 
Thus the primary elements in the origin and in the devel- 
Dpment of the church are not subordinated to the second- 
ary and dependent agencies. Education has its place, but 
not the first place, in the new life-process, not even under 
the most favorable circumstances; for the child, as the 
man, needs renewal, and that renewal can only come of 
union with Christ. The church can never take the place 
of him from whom it sprang, and whose life it incarnates, 
and can never by mere educative means and influences 
mould natures, however young and plastic, into the like- 
ness of its Lord. lie alone can found the new theocracy 
by working on and in human souls, through his provi- 
dence, his institutions, his followers, his word and the 
Christian literature it has created, and, above all, by 
means of his living ministry. 

The church thus founded has penetrated all races and 
all nationalities, however diverse they may have been in 
character, or culture, or manners, or government. It has 



CHRISTIANITY A DIVINB KINGDOM, 181 

established itself among the most advanced nations of the 
world, of whose civilization it is the highest expression 
and the chief support. It has entered the great families 
of India, and planted itself among the barbarous tribes of 
Asia and of Africa. It was able to do this by the simple 
and radical principles it embodied and avowed, and by 
that unseen spiritual presence of which it was the abid- 
ing witness. A solitary missionary, gathering two or 
three souls about himself, forms the nucleus of the king- 
dom of God. Then and there is inaugurated a religious 
revolution ; and from that event is to be dated the over- 
throw of the mighty fabrics of licathon superstitions. Thus 
heralds of truth and love, with no gift but that of simple 
faith in their Master, have by patient working and waiting 
girdled the earth with new Christian communities, and laid 
the groundwork for his universal reign. 

The imperfections of the existing church of God, the 
slowness of its growth, its varying fortunes, and its present 
limitations need not raise any misgivings or fears. All 
these were anticipated by its Founder. lie knew the ma- 
terial he had to work with, and the character of the work 
which needed to be done in and for man, and the mode of 
doing it. lie designed that tlie church should be formed 
out of a new humanity, and he knew that that humanity 
could be only partially conformed in this world to his own 
plan and ideal. lie recognized the greatness of man's 
moral nature. He " left unabrogated the laws of human 
development. lie secured all the coming ages, in which 
each nation might work out its own destiny. He made all 
virtues ac(i[uircments as well as gifts, so that they might 
become the real and peiniaiient possessions of the soul. 

The difficulties which start up, on the theory of the hu- 
16 



182 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

man origin of the church, are overwhelming and fatal; 
while those which present themselves on the supposition of 
its divine origin are superficial and casual in their char- 
acter. They are but the accompaniments of human free- 
dom. Thej are grounded on hindrances which are sure 
to yield, in the course of time, to the inherent and irre- 
pressible tendencies of truth. These obstacles will, in the 
lapse of the uncounted ages, be reduced to so many van- 
ishing points. Still the church is never to be glorified in 
the midst of its conflicts on earth, but only at the close of 
its struggles, as it enters on its triumphal life in heaven 
itself. 



CHAPTEK VII. 

CHRISTIANITY A FULFILMENT. 

SECTION FIB8T, 

THE ETHNIC PREPARATION. ' 

As Christ was not the creature of his age, but the cre- 
ator of a new epoch and the leader of all the outpouring 
centuries, so his religion was a new creation. It was not 
the efflorescence of Judaism, for the old economy was 
Jjing out when Christ appeared. He was not evolved 
zrom the life of the Jewish people, for, though born of 
them, he was above them all. His appearance was a fresh 
deed-act of God, creative and transcendent in its charac- 
ter. His religion could not be an amalgam of Judaism 
and orientalism; for it had a living unity in the grand 
Personage of its Founder, so that it could not consist of 
any mosaic, however beautifully or artistically made. It 
is true the East had its incarnations, and the West its 
apotheoses, but the aspirations and the dreams of both 
were purified and realized alone in the central historical 
fact of Christianity, — the coming and the reign of the Son 
of God in human life. And Judaism itself was only the 
prelude and the herald, and in no sense the creator, of the 
new Christian faith. 

But Christianity has another broad aspect. Christ 

appeared in the "fulness of times." His religion must, 

183 



184 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY, 

then, be not a development, but a fulfilment of prophecy, 
— whether that prophecy emerges with increasing clear- 
ness along the path of the ethnic nations, or whether it 
consciously gathers to a head in the Hebrew race. 

The New Testament represents heathendom as a world 
forsaken of God. But this abandonment is not an abne- 
gation of divine control. For there can be no interreg- 
num in the government of God. His general providence 
is extended over all the earth. He reveals himself in the 
heathen conscience, and in the bounties of nature, and the 
divine call to repentance repeats itself with every setting 
sun. Yet God does abandon them, in that he does not 
send a prophet to reveal his counsels, or a priest to conse- 
crate his sanctuary, and to minister at his altar. Thus, in 
the language of the apostle, " He suffers all nations to 
walk in their own ways." But the light of experience 
and of history ever remains to witness to God's watch- 
care and love. We must, then, conclude that even Gentil- 
ism, in its dim foregleams of the truth, and in its fearful 
revelations of its wants and woes, was a providential prep- 
aration for Christianity. It must be so, since redemption 
is the goal of Providence. 

This preparation was also ideal in its character. The 
Pagan mind embodied its hopes and its fears, even its 
profoundest ideas, in symbols and myths. Many of its 
divinities were the impersonation of its governing moral 
sentiments. Thus Nemesis was the goddess of retribution ; 
the Eumenides, the avengers of crime ; Hercules, the em- 
bodiment of the heroic virtues. The poets gave a fixed 
form to their sense of the true and the right in their epics 
and dramas. But these fables, witJi all their drapery of 
fancy and with all their truthful eentiments, had no his- 



CHRlSTIAinTY A FULFILMENT. 185 

torical basis, and hence could have no permanent hold on 
the moral susceptibilities of the people. Their deeper 
truths lived chiefly in the imagination, and hardly in the 
convictions, of the literary men of the Old World. It is 
true there was a progress in breadth and loftiness of view. 
We can advance from Homer to the tragedians, from Plato 
to Seneca and the Roman stoics, who succeeded him. It 
was, however, an advancement in the region of pure 
thought, rather than in action, — in letters and criticism, 
rather than in noble living. There were dramatists and 
historians and satirists, and even moralists, but no re- 
formers. The spirit of reform only ruffled the surface 
of society. The cold idealism of the great masters of 
poesy and of philosophy had rendered it well-nigh impos- 
sible. For it is worthy of note, that, in the very age 
when ethical science most fully bloomed, its very prin- 
ciples most waned in motive power. The old Pagan 
moralists indulged in beautiful speculations, but seem nof 
to have had faith in their own ideals. Cicero argued for 
the existence of God ; but God with him was only a neces- 
sity of thought, and not of life. He does not base virtue 
on God's nature or his will. Seneca wrote his eulogy on 
poverty, and had his millions out at an exorbitant interest. 
He commended a life of abstinence, and lived luxuriously 
in his splendid palace. His works were text-books in the 
schools of Rome, and abounded in detached moral senti- 
ments of striking beauty. But his noble words on the 
inherent rights of all men, unsupported as they were by 
depth of conviction, or by a self-sacrificing life, were 
grateful to Roman ears, as only the music of a beautiful 
song. This ideal preparation did, however, promote the 
general culture and advance the general intelligence. 



186 EVIDENCES OF CHLTSTIANITT, 

The iileas of truth and of goodness were raised to a highet 
level. The standard of moral excellence was so elevated 
as to comprehend, in a measure, the mission of Him, 
who should, in his own person, actually embody a still 
higher ideal, and actually realize and make potential in 
the world a still loftier virtue. 

This preparation was also outward and negative in its 
nature. We call it outward, because the Old World did, 
in many directions, but rear the scaffolding of Christian 
civilization. Greece and Rome had gathered all that was 
valuable in the culture of heathendom. The treasures 
of science heaped up in the valley of the Euphrates, or 
along the banks of the Nile, had not been lost. They 
found a repository in the great bilingual empire which 
encircled the Great Sea. The Greeks bequeathed all her 
master-works of philosophy and of art ; and the Romans 
handed down to the coming Christian ages her splendid 
system of jurisprudence, and her municipal institutions. 
The rising Christian states gathered inspiration from the 
one and practical wisdom from the other. Thus te ethnic 
literature, when it had reached its greatest fulness and 
richness, opened a wide path for the entrance of the new 
faith. The general enlightenment which accompanied and 
followed its diffusion made the common people accessible 
to the gospel. Such was the view of the early Christian 
Fathers. We find, too, in the porticos of the Eastern 
church the followers of Pythagoras and of Plato pictured 
as those who prepared the way for Christianity. 

The great despotisms of the Oriental world are here left 
out of account. They did not prepare the way so much 
for the coming of Christ as they did for the diffusion of 
Lis religion at a later period. They saved much from tt* 



CHRISTIANITY A FUIFILMENT. 187 

gi'eat waste and ruin of barbarism, and will, no doubt, here- 
after add much to a deeper apprehension of Christianity 
itself The gospel will come to them, not with the isolated 
miracles of apostles, but with the pei'manent miracles of 
a Christendom of eio;hteen centuries standino;. 

o o 

This preparation was also negative in its character, for 
it was the preparation of hopelessness. It was the ethnic 
conviction which must precede the conversion of the 
nations. The wail of the world's woes voiced itself in 
supprossvd murmurs of despair. Heathenism revealed 
just those defects and those wants which Christianity sup- 
plied. It was the proclamation and the verification of the 
failure of all human efforts to redeem society from its im- 
pending doom. Gentilism, by its deification of the forces 
of nature and of life, revealed its yearning for a personal 
Grod incarnated in humanity. Its system of idolatry, with 
its consecrated symbols, expressed its need of some effect- 
ual mediation between God and man. And its sacrificial 
rites showed how deeply convinced the worshipper was of 
the reigning presence of evil within him and without him, 
and how he craved a propitiation which would restore him 
to the favor of the Deity. In all this there is an unconscious 
prophecy. The mystery of blood veiled under those dark 
heathen rites was clearly revealed on Golgotha. 

The crisis in the old civilization showed that the ful- 
ness of times had come. It demanded a special interven- 
tion. The fate of society depended on the introduction 
of new dominant life-forces, which should impress and 
mould this great, heaving, fluid mass of humanity. How 
impending and decisive this crisis was, is apparent from 
the causes which induced it, and their radical and wide- 
sweeping effects. The leading ones must be here noted. 



188 EVIDENCES OF CffElSTIAXITT. 

The very growth of the empire hastened its decline. 
The belt of nations which enclosed the Great Sea formed 
one great Mediterranean community. Rome Avas its social 
and political centre. She had Romanized all the lower 
forms of culture. The empire was one in thought, and 
feeling, and interest, as well as in polity. This centrali- 
zation broke down and wore away the life of the separate 
stats^s. The petty tyrannies and partial codes of opposing 
nationalities were lost in this consolidation. But with the 
nationality the stronger elements of public life also per- 
ished. The hold on the past was broken, or made crush- 
ingly sad, and all aspirations for the future were gone for- 
ever. The love of country, so grand in its intensity and 
exclusiveness, went down with the loss of independence. 
The Roman citizen, himself strong in his patriotism, with a 
high sense of his personal worth, lost that sense when he 
found the elective franchise so extended as to admit vast 
numbers of outsiders to the dignity of citizenship. His 
virtue sunk with his self-respect. All the distinctive 
traits of the old Roman character were fused and trans- 
fused in this cosmopolitan culture. 

The sudden and enormous increase of wealth stiP 
further sapped the foundations of Roman society. A 
large part of this was gained through the legitimate chan- 
nels of commerce and trade, but by no means all. The 
state made its provinces tributary, and its wars the occa- 
sion of wholesale robbery. Its public functionaries were 
extortioners and spendthrifts. Wealth, thus wrongfully 
gained, and selfishly squandered, without any principle 
or any high ends to regulate its use, could not but poison 
all the veins and arteries of the common life. The old 
domestic virtues of the Romans could not resist the tide 



CHRISTIANirr A FULFILMENT, 189 

of corruption. The number of slaves greatly increased 
by war and by purchase, and the curse of slavery burned 
itself deeper into the vitals of the commonwealth. Labor 
was dishonored. Trade was placed in the hands of the 
bondmen. Crowds of paupers Avere supported in idleness 
by the largesses of ambitious demagogues. Luxury per- 
vaded all the higher classes of society, and bore its legiti- 
mate fruit. Men and women became effeminate, and re- 
fised to bear the burdens of children. The old, noble 
familiet Jied out, or were replenished by the sons of bar- 
barians. R-ome was losing her best blood. Underneath 
loftness of manner there lurked callousness of heart, a 
cruel and often ferocious disposition. Sensuality reigned 
everywhere. It was not an excrescence of society, as in 
modern life, but it paraded itself in public. Art was 
made to foster it, and foreign superstitions gave it a semi- 
religious sanction. Images of shame were painted in 
Tjrivate dwellings, and carved on the vases, and elegantly 
wrought on the ornaments of the hand? and feet. The 
low and degrading scenes' of the theatre, and amphithea- 
tre, and circus, drew together, not only the rabble, but the 
fashion and the elegance, of Roman society. The famous 
watering-places of Italy, Baise and Puteoli, derived all 
their charms from the godless lives of the aristocratic 
families of the metropolis. In fxct, the courtesans were 
the representatives of educated women. The ties of do- 
mestic life were greatly weakened. Divorce was common. 
Cicero. Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, and his successor, put 
away their wives. It was done, too, at pleasure, and 
without even the formality of a judicial procedure. The 
responsibilities and cares of marriage had become irk- 
some ; and the emperor had to treat celibacy as a crime 



190 EVIDENCES OF CniilSTlANITT, 

against the state. Augustus went so far as to sanction 
that immoral relation where the ' ' arnica ' ' took the place 
of the wife. The old society was surfeited Avith illicit 
excesses and dementing vices. Its vital forces were well- 
nigh worn out in refined indulgences, or in brutal pleas- 
ures. Law only restrained the passions, and philosophy 
only refined the manners. Beneath a splendid exterior 
there was concealed a hopeless decrepitude of body and of 
soul. 

The loss of the ancestral faith precipitated the fall of 
the old culture. This grew out of the decline of specula- 
tive studies, and out of the increase of general intelli- 
gence. Philosophy had spent its force. It had lost its 
fascination for the leading minds of the republic or of 
the empire. Its earnestness was gone. Its sublime prob- 
lems were treated as so many puzzles which might amuse 
the intellect, but could not satisfy the soul. Its study 
was at best an amusement, or a discipline, and its pursuit 
a trade. Rhetoricians dealt out its petrified forms to the 
scholars, and strolling pedagogues peddled their small 
wares to crowds in the market-place ; and mountebanks and 
astrologers were the real teachers of the lower order of 
society. The result of all this was scepticism on the one 
hand, and superstition on the other. The educated classes 
became infidel. They treated the state religion as a 
police arrangement, to be accepted and used for what it 
was worth. But the moral and religious convictions of 
the masses had not absolutely rotted away. They must 
worship something. Thus, when they left the gods of 
their fathers, they turned with the recklessness of desi)air 
to the foreign shrines. They deified their living emperors, 
and put them on a level with their old divinities. The 



CHRISTIAmTY A FULFILMENT. 191 

change was demoralizing. The new gods of the East 
brought with them their retinue of priests and prophets, 
their coarse and sensuous festivals, and their secret and 
mystic rites and ceremonies. Thus the shrine vied with 
the stage in glorifying vice. The conservative elements 
(f the ancient faith perished between the infidelity of the 
leaders of society, and the new and fierce superstitions 
of their followers. Unbelief and credulity are always the 
twin offspring of a fast-decaying civilization. 

This process of death went on all the more surely and 
rapidly, for the reason that the multitude were uncon- 
scious of its presence. Still, here and there, were vague 
expectations of a deliverer, — expectations which betokened 
a sense of helplessness. And the more earnest citizen? 
could not conceal from themselves that society was ap- 
proaching a dissolution. Tacitus looked on human life 
with pity or contempt, and Juvenal is as bitter and sar- 
castic in his representations, as the Roman historian ia 
clear and sad and despairing in his delineations. Sen- 
eca advocated suicide as the only remedy for brave men. 
He exclaimed: '-Freedom is so near, and yet there arc 
slaves! " It is evident, as Ritter aflBrms, in his ''History 
of Philosophy," "that the Roman nation was ripe for 
death." And Branis, in his Introduction to his "Phi- 
losophy," has well put the case: "The first centuries of 
Christianity are nothing but a death and a resurrection, — 
a death, as a decay and ending of the old order of things ; 
a resurrection, as the bringing in of a new epoch, whose 
immanent principle and conscious motive was Christ.'' 
One thing is plain, that the tragic feature in this great 
drama was becoming broader and deeper when the final 
catastrophe wa,s partially avened and turned aside by the 



192 EVIDENCES or cnmSTIANITT. 

coming of the Son of God. Thus the ethnic civilization, 
bj its fulness and by its emptiness, by its hopelessness 
and by its yearnings, by the pressure of its inmost needs 
and by its real progress in moral enlightenment, was an 
unconscious preparation for the introduction of the Chris- 
tian religion. 

SECTION SECOND. 

THE JEWISH PREPARATION. 

The Jewish people were a marvellous phenomenon in an- 
cient history. They were separated from others by broad 
and generic differences, — differences which place them 
on a higher plane of spiritual life than that occupied by the 
foremost of the ethnic races. Inferior to most in culture, 
in power, in wealth, in extent of territory, and in trade 
and commerce, but in advance of all in the purity of their 
faith, and in the spirituality of their worship, and in the 
depth and tenderness of their religious feelings, the He- 
brew race stood out a unique people, and an elect commu- 
nity among the nations of the earth. A supernatural 
element marks their origin and pervades their history. 

Judaism was not a variation of the common belief of 
the Old World, It was not a reform of any heathen relig- 
ion, but the contradiction of them all. It did not affiliate 
with them, but repudiated all fellowship and contact with 
them. Its intolerance isolated the Jews as truly as their 
faith ; in fact, the former was the offspring of the latter. 
The surrounding nations were the foil of the Hebrew peo- 
ple, bringing out by their contrasts the singularity of 
Jewish institutions and the purity of the Jewish worship ; 
for it broke with the naturalism which environed it. The 



CnniSTIANlTT A FULFILMENT, 193 

kindred tribes of the North and of the East had th«ii 
symbolic representations of the hosts of heaven, and their 
gross, sensuous rites and ceremonies. But the Jews never 
adopted any of them except in express and direct conflict 
with their own established and recognized creed. The old 
Egyptian faith was equally alien to that which Moses had 
received from Jehovah, and had given to his countrymen. 
Its worship was divided between the silent tenants of the 
heavens, and the dumb creatures of the earth. The old 
Egyptians saw, in the unerring instincts of the animal, the 
workings of a superhuman intelligence, and in its very 
lumbness they felt the mystery of its silent presence. 
Thus divinity seemed nearer to them in the brute than in 
man. Judaism was absolutely free from the least taint 
of any such mediation. The consciousness of Jehovah 
Tfhis, in direct fellowship with the consciousness of his wor- 
jhjpper. The religious belief of Egypt did not stamp 
itself in that of Judea, even where we might have expected 
such a result. We should have supposed that the doctrine 
of immortality would have been placed in the foreground 
of the Mosaic economy. Such is not the fact. It was the 
meeting of God now, and not the coming into his presence 
hereafter, which was the great motive presented by the 
lawgiver of Israel. Immediate rewards and punishments, 
and not remote ones, were the burden of prophetic utter- 
ances. These were accepted as the preludes of something 
more hereafter. Such a pre-eminence in the very group 
of nations to which the Jewish people belonged, points 
them out as holding a leading position in the religious his- 
tory of the world. 

But the life of the Hebrews did touch here and there 
the life of the adjoining tribes and nations. Its ritual^ in 

17 



194 EVIDENCES OF CRRISTIANITT, 

its outward forms, often bears a rude resemblance to those 
of Babylon and Egypt. But these resemblances were 
only incidental in their character. They did not touch 
the centre of faith, or the heart of the inner life of the 
Jews. These forms and rites, borrowed from the Gentiles, 
and often greatly changed, were, in fact, rebaptized, and 
made to take on a new and higher significance. The char- 
acter of Judaism, on whatever side it is viewed, demands 
a supernatural origin, as it points to a divine destination. 
We cannot account for this system of religion, and the 
modes of thought and habits of feeling it engendered, 
except on the supposition that they were the people of 
God, educated and set apart by an unseen power, — the 
organ of the Divine Will, and the depositaries of revealed 
truth, — a people whose history was both miraculous and 
prophetic. 

However criticism may deal with the Pentateuch, and 
the glorious writings of the old Hebrew prophets, one 
thing seems certain, and that is, that Judaism was of 
God. The divine call and mission of Moses must be 
admitted as a settled historical fact, without which the 
Mosaic dispensation would be the enigma of the Old 
World. 

The rise of heathenism endangered the purity of the 
primeval revelations ; and the founding of new nations on 
a Polytheistic basis tended to make idolatry universal, and 
to banish the worship of the true God from the face of the 
earth. One nation must be formed after the divine model, 
in order to save the original truths given to man, and to 
transmit them in increased measure, and with new applica- 
tions, to the succeeding ages. They could not be left to 
single souls gathered into a free church, for in such a 



CnmSTIANlTT A FULFILMENT, 195 

society the individual was nothing, and freedom was a 
chimera. 

At such a crisis in the world's history a solitary person- 
age is summoned to found a theocratic state. Borne up 
by a sense of destiny, and by a lofty faith in the success 
of Lis mission, the patriarch forsakes his ancestral home 
and retires to the hills of Canaan. Here his family is 
secluded and trained under the old theophany. At a 
later period, their descendants migrate, under the providen- 
tial guidance of Jehovah, to the rural districts of Egypt- 
Here they remain under the severe but salutary discipline 
of bondage, till they are in a miraculous manner delivered, 
and directed to return to the home of their fathers. At 
Sinai, Jehovah gives them his law, and accepts them as 
his elect people. They march under his guidance, and 
witness in their journey ings fresh miracles of judgment 
and of mercy. Thus organized and instructed, they enter 
the promised land, — a land both isolated and central, 
where, on the one hand, they may be protected from foreign 
influences, and where, on the other hand, they may go 
forth, at the foreordained hour, as the bearers of positive 
revealed truth to the Gentile world. 

A theocratic state was thus established. Jehovah be- 
comes the sole lawgiver of the new commonwealth. He 
enters into friendly relations with the children of Israel. 
He establishes a central seat of public worship, and mani- 
fests his special presence in its inmost sanctuary. He thus 
contrasts his one tabernacle at Jerusalem with the many 
temples of the Polytheistic nations. An order of heredi- 
tary priests was established, whose ministrations, morning 
and evening, and on the great festive occasions, should 
keep fresh the memories of the past, and keep alive the 



196 EVIDENCES OF CffRISTIANlTT. 

consciousness of sin and of redemption. To guard against 
the formalism of the priestly order and their ritual, Jeho- 
vah raised up a succession of prophets, — interpreters of 
his mind and guardians of his honor, — both patriots and 
preachers of righteousness. A volume of written law was 
thus gradually formed, which embodied the will of God 
and the history of his people. A theocratic element per- 
vades the public life and controls the fortunes of the na- 
tion. Loyalty to Jehovah secures victory, disloyalty 
brings defeat and exile. Its whole history was an illus- 
trjition, on the broadest scale, of the supernatural provi- 
doMce of God. 

Thus Judaism was not so much an ideal, as a real 
preparation for Christianity ; for the Mosaic economy 
did not grow out of the current modes of thought and of 
feeling in the ancestors of Abraham. It was the revival 
and enlargement of the primeval faith in the soul of the 
paU'iarch. Here was its new germ and its fresh starting- 
point, originating in the deed-act of Jehovah. God 
passed in symbols before his vision, and entered creatively 
into his consciousness. His faith did not spring from his 
fancy, but rested in the facts of his life and history. 
Otherwise, he could not have been the founder of the He- 
brew race. Judaism did not consist simply in the wealth 
of religious ideas or the depth of the religious senti- 
ment prevalent among the masses ; nor even in the higher 
conceptions of truth cherished by the more advanced 
thinkers of the Jewish community. It vfas a positive re- 
ligion. The law, the family of priests, the line of 
prophets, the temple service and its significant and splen- 
did ceremonial, all had a divine origin and sanction, — an 
authority far above the endorsement of the people or of 



CHRISTIANITY A FULFILMENT. 19V' 

their leaders, — an authority grounded on the re en* 
fcrance of God into the course of nature and into the life of 
humanity. Besides, the belief in Jehovah, the recognition 
of his unity, personality, and providence, was not a senti- 
ment grounded on the interpretation of the natural signs 
of the divine presence, but a living conviction, created by 
the transcendent movement of God in the history of the 
people. This belief was not a sentiment which had 
clothed itself in a myth, but an inward persuasion, whose 
reality was witnessed to by the grand miracles which 
marked the epochs in the history of Israel. Thus the 
whole Jewish mind was realistic in its tendencies. Na- 
ture's laws were God's mode of operation; and ev'i;ry 
event in the lives of the individuals was seen in the li/^ht 
of the divine presence, and every change of fortune in 
the life of the nation was marked by some religious festi- 
val or some sacred rite. In brief, Judaism was not a sys- 
tem worked out by their great men, but had come to them 
from without and from above ; not from the subjectivity 
of man, but from the objectivity of God's presence J^nd 
agency in the history of the people. Its dogmas had a 
historical, but supernatural basis. 

This preparation was direct as well as real in its char- 
acter. The old economy brought men into actual fellow- 
ship with Jehovah, and was thus the medium of divine 
life and light. That life and light was not so clear 
and so full as the distinctively Christian life, but it was 
essentially the same. The sun was hidden, but the plan- 
ets still gave forth his reflected light. The dawning of the 
morning gave the promise of a noontide splendor. Jeho- 
vah stood to the pious Hebrew consciousness in a like rela- 
tion as Christ now stands to the Christian consciousness 
17* 



198 EVIDENCES OF CHTtlSTIANITT. 

This appears on comparing the experimental theology of 
the Psalms with that of the Epistles. The way of life, 
too, indicated in the approaches to the symbolic Presence 
over the mercy-seat in the Holy of Holies, was a clear 
type of the great central principle of the Christian faith, 
that ' ' without the shedding of blood there is no remis- 
sion." 

Judaism, then, standing midway in the world's history, 
with great memories and greater hopes, was prophetic 
throughout. There was a conscious incompleteness which 
pointed to the future. The aspirations within and the 
riiaal without demanded something better and greater 
thum what was realized in the Mosaic economy. The very 
doctrine of one God for the one race of man foreshadowed 
the ultimate spread of the cardinal principles of Judaism. 
Its exclusiveness was on the surface ; in its centre and 
core it bore the seeds of universality. The Jewish people 
in their highest moods of thought were conscious of their 
high mission. Their prophets themselves, in clear and 
emphatic tones, foretold a new covenant, — a law written 
in the hearts of men, — a new theocratic economy, at once 
universal and spiritual. 

Judaism, then, in its character and in its history, has 
the highest evidential value. It is the great historic wit- 
ness to the truth of Christianity, inferior only to that 
given in the person and life of Christ himself. Here crit- 
icism cannot obscure the prophecy, or throw doubt on its 
fulfilment. The one is the firmest fact in ancient history, 
and the other is the broadest fact in modern life. 

It is not meant to ignore or belittle the striking charac- 
ter of many prophetic utterances. They need, however, 
a fuller discussion than we can here give to them. The 



CHRISTIANITY A FULFILBtENT, 199 

general character of prophecy claims here a passing no- 
tice. 

There is a prophetic element in man, now unnaturally 
disturbed in the clairvoyant, and now supernaturally ex- 
alted in the seer. The last was the case with the prophets 
3f Israel. They were not the chroniclers of future events, 
but the interpreters of the divine purpose, — tlie expo- 
nents of the moral order of the universe. They unfold 
the features of the kingdom of God, in the light of hia 
:a\enging justice, or of his redeeming mercy. Their chief 
mission was to console or to warn their own countrymen. 
Thus their immediate vision was the near future. But as 
this future was only a type of the recurring cycles, which 
arc to fill up the entire historic period, so it was seen in the 
light of the grand consummation ; for the energy of hope 
brings the outgoings of the present into close contact with 
the grand finality. Thus, too, they paint the future in 
colors drawn from their surroundings, and in images sug- 
gested by the customs and institutions of their age. They 
draw this future out of the present, not by the aid of 
human insight, but by faith in the purposes of God, and 
by virtue of that illumination which placed them far above 
the historians and statesmen of the world. Tracing the 
footsteps of God in the past, recognizing his presence in 
their own times, they saw with the clearness of open 
7ision his goings forth in history, and their grand conse- 
quences. The burden of all their prophecies was the 
struggles and the progress and the triumph of the kingdom 
of God. A moral and a supernatural element character- 
ized their proclamations. Here and there may be met 
flashes of prophetic foresight, isolated, but clear and 
specific. But these, too, all have a relation to and a bear- 



200 EVIDENCES OF cnRisriAmTY. 

ing on tlie one grand promise and the one grand theme, — 
the new crowning Messianic period, — the reign of God in 
the souls of men. 

But this negative and this positive preparation — this 
preparation of despair and of hope, the one coming from 
the Gentile world, and the other from the Jewish people, 
— must, to be effectual, flow into one channel. Now this 
was brought about by the concurrence of three great 
changes, political and social, in the Roman Empire. 

The first was the gradual, but wide-spread, dispersion 
of the Jewish people. Impelled by a loss of nationality, 
and by a love of gain, they made their homes in the chief 
cities of the empire, establishing synagogues and places of 
prayer, and carrying with them the Greek version of their 
prophetic writings. 

The second was the establishment of one polity and one 
general government over the civilized world. Rome was 
the seat of authority for this great monarchy. Military 
roads extended from her forum to the most distant col- 
onies. Her population, with its extravagance and its lux- 
uries, created a vast commerce, and filled the seas and ^ho 
rivers with the merchandise of her most remote provinci^s. 
Thus the antagonism of nations was broken, the antipa- 
thies of races greatly weakened, and the idea of a uni- 
versal state prepared the way for the grander conception 
of a religion which should transcend the limits of nation- 
ality, and become as wide-spread as the human race. Be- 
sides, war was driven to the outskirts of the empire, and 
general peace left the highways of travc^l free and open to 
all. Thus, the countries bordering on the Great Sea were 
opened to the missionaiy as well as to the trader, to the 
preacher of the cross as well as to the soldiers of Caesar 



CBRISTIANITT A FULFILMENT, 201 

The third was the diffusion of the Greek tongue. The 
armies of Alexander and of his successors had carried the 
common Greek idioms into the eastern portions of the civil- 
ized world. Thej had founded colonies and settled in the 
cities, and thus introduced, throughout Asia Minor, Syria, 
and Egypt, their native language. Rome herself was 
reached by the intercourse of her people with the East, 
and also by the fact that her leading men were ambitious 
to know the literature of Greece, and to have their sons 
educated in some one of her far-famed schools of learn- 
ing. 

Thus was the world prepared for Christianity. Had it 
appeared earlier, it could not have been apprehended, and 
would have perished in the warring jealousies of opposing 
states. Had it come later, all the treasures of the past 
would have been destroyed, instead of being appropriated, 
and the ends of Providence would have been defeated. 
But Christ came at the appointed time. The Jewish 
mind was cherishing the expectation of his coming, ?md 
the pagan mind was groping all unconsciously after htm. 
God entered humanity, and went forth to meet the une 
and find the other. The apostles, wherever they trav- 
elled, could freely enter the Jewish synagogue, and there 
discourse to their countrymen, and to the numerous pros- 
elytes from the Gentiles ; or they could gather in the forum 
and market-place a crowd more or less ready to listen to 
the gospel of Christ. Thus Christianity became the ful- 
filment of the conscious and of the unconscious prophecies 
of the Old World. 



CHAPTEK VIII. 

CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER. 

SECTION FIBST. 

ITS ADAPTATION TO HUMANITY. 

Christianity addresses the religious consciousness. As 
ft supernatural fact, it is the lifting of the veil of nature, and 
the appearance of God in human history ; as a divine life, 
It is the return of God to the soul, and his re-enthrone- 
mont in the affections and in the will of his creature ; as 
a divine doctrine, it is the unfolding of the redemptive 
agency and process for the recovery of the race, and the 
restoration of the individual soul to its God ; as a divine 
law, it gives the ideal, towards which man must move, in 
order to reach the goal of his hopes and the perfection of 
his nature; as a divine kingdom, it grounds the oneness 
of the race on a common natural likeness to God, and in- 
stitutes a profounder community of life, based on a deeper 
resemblance to his character; and, as a fulfilment, it 
reveals man's position in the providence of God, and 
explains the past, and guarantees the future. It thus 
satisfies what is broadest and deepest in humanity,' — 
man's craving after life, and light, and sympathy. 

But man's wants must first be provided for, before his 

capabilities and possibilities can be met and satisfied. 

These are expresses! in the universal and correlative facta 

SQ2 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER. 203 

of human sin and human guilt. These are the radical 
and permanent characteristics of human nature in its 
present state of existence. Christianity seeks to meet these 
at the very outset. It does so, not mainly by enlight- 
enment or reform, still less by any outward re-organiza- 
tion of society, but by a redemptive mediation. In this 
way a new access is opened to God's infinite love, and 
the lost communion is renewed, and made deeper and 
richer in spiritual experiences. Had Christ been a mere 
teacher, he could not have been the one crowning necessity 
of the race, nor could his mission have been anything else 
than a splendid failure. If man only needed instruction, 
then Socrates might have regenerated Athens, and Seneca 
might have stayed the corruption of Rome. 

But the physical side of our nature is the open theatre, 
though not the seat, of human misery. The tidal wave 
of sadness flows from our mortality, and the common griefs 
of life spring from a sense of our waning strength, and 
from the consciousness of the certainty of our doom. The 
changes in the home circle wrought by death, the vacan- 
cies and voids caused by the loss of dear ones, and the 
blighting of hopes and of high ambitions, which its near 
prospect occasions, are evils which belong to our very con- 
dition. He who has exhausted and mastered these evils 
of our common humanity can alone become its great helper 
and healer. His victory over death is the one convincing 
argument for the resurrection of the dead. All others are 
robbed of their consoling power by the touch of death. 
Nothing that is spiritual in friendship, or that is pure in 
human affection, can perish. Here the religion of Jesus 
comes to the heart of every man with the comforts and 
consolations of a better world. The redemption of the 



204 EVIDENCES OF CRRISTIANITT. 

whole man gives to the doctrine of a future life a palpable 
form and a practical worth all its own. The individual 
is saved. The growth of each one follows the law of its 
own life. The symmetry is, as we have elsewhere saidy 
typical, and not ideal. The lines of separation between 
souls are not obliterated. The flower and fruit in another 
world are as different as the bud and blossom of this life. 
Each individuality is to be maintained with its symmetry 
of type and its treasures of soul experience. Thus, in the 
promise and in the procurement of a new and higher life 
for both soul and body, Christianity satisfies one of the 
most pressing of human necessities. 

The only immortality, which filled the cultivated pagan 
mind and monopolized its aspirations, was the immortality 
of fame. This came from the fact that the moral convic- 
tions had melted away in refined self-indulgence, and the 
yearnings after a better life had perished in the excilie- 
ments of an engrossing ambition. We meet everywhere in 
the Latin writers of the Augustan age the ' ' vivit .enim 
vivetque semper," or one of its parallels in the " est, erit- 
que," or the "manet, et semper manebit," or the "viget., 
vigebitque." They never dwell on the hope of a reunion. 
Even Cicero, with a higher moral consciousness than hia 
contemporaries, only gives way to a sense of his own loss 
in the death of his Tulliola. Neither he, nor the many 
friends who wrote letters of sympathy, could conceal the 
bollowness of all consolation apart from the hope of a con- 
scious and happy reunion hereafter. Plutarch, too, could 
go no further in his letter to his wife than to speak of the 
death of their daughter as " a little blot ' ' in the volume of 
their happy life, and add, as a mere sentiment, that the life 
of the little one had become divine. The only immortality 



CBSISTIANITT A WOULD POWER. 205 

which moved these men was the reverence of after ages. 
Still humanity craved something more than this. And 
these authors betray at times those deeper yearnings which 
belong to our common nature. 

Christianity does not aim to furnish materials in an im- 
mediate and direct manner to allay the ev^ils of life. It 
could only do this by making self-sacrifice impossible, and 
by excluding all heroism from the kingdom of God. It 
meets the ills of humanity by moral and spiritual forces. 
It instils the principle of faith ; it inculcates the discipline 
of sorrow ; it evokes on every hand the charities and the 
sympathies of the favored ones of Providence ; and it en- 
genders and makes real the hopes of a holier and happier 
life hereafter. 

If Christianity was adapted to the peculiar wants and 
tastes of the cultivated classes alone, then its teach(^rs 
would be philosophers, its Bible a speculative treatise, and 
its church an academy. As a philosophy, it might have 
had a success ; as a religion, it would have been doomed to 
a complete failure. Ha:l it accommodated itself to tVie 
level of the more ignorant of the community, then we 
should have had another form of superstition, and Jesua 
would have been added to the gods of the Pantheon. But 
it adjusts itself to neither of these halves of our humanity, 
but is conformed to the permanent and universal capabili- 
ties of the race. It thus subordinates the intellectual to 
the spiritual nature of man. It places wisdom before 
knowledge, worship before culture. It reveals to man his 
true dignity, reconciles him to himself, and implants in his 
soul the principle of a new and higher harmony. In and 
by virtue of this very subordination, the human reason 
takes a loftier flight than when it moves alone, self-centred 
18 



206 EVIDENCES OF CnRISTIANTTT. 

and self-directed; for it transcends the intellect of the 
greatest and best, and stimulates the minds of even the low- 
liest. All are made to breathe the air of its grand myste- 
ries, and to feel the glow and warmth that come from the 
atmosphere of a higher life. Under such an influence, the 
intellect cannot be dwarfed or become shallow from mere 
self-complacencj. Knowledge has a religious aspect and 
worth ; and the search for truth is seen to be the law of 
growth, and its results are made to be an eternal posses- 
sion, and the means of an everlasting good. 

Christianitj does not ignore the eesthetic element in 
human nature. While it makes the conscience the regu- 
lative principle in the sphere of morals, it allows to the 
taste its own ample domain. Its attitude is clear and posi- 
tive. Its central fact and its constitutive principle sug- 
gest the theory of the beautiful. Beauty is the infinite 
incarnating itself in the modes and forms of the finite. It 
is the divine embodying itself in the human. The di- 
vine thought, whether it be the right, the good, or the true, 
as it voices itself in life, is ever beautiful. The divine 
volition, as it passes into creation and settles down in na- 
ture, becomes an object of sublimity or of grace, according 
to the intensity of its presence and its movement. Beauty, 
then, is the ideal as it actualizes itself in nature, and as it 
is approached in pure and noble living, or as it is still fur- 
ther realized in the works of creative genius. 

Christianity has ennobled art, and widened the bounda- 
ries of her empire. It has given to the endless changes 
and forms, and even laws, of nature a divine aspect. It 
brings out her hidden meaning and secret intent, and so 
enables the artist to embody the spirit of beauty in his 
own transcendent creations. In fact, landscape-painting, 



CHmaTIAKlTT A WORLD POWER, 207 

whether it be an imitation or an idealization of nature, is 
in its highest form the product of Christian art. Chris- 
tianity furnishes ampler and richer materials for the 
painter or the sculptor than can be found in the old mytholo- 
gies, or in the lives of Pagan nations. Her history is full 
of saintly and heroic deeds, and her spirit must ever in- 
spire the artist with purer and loftier ideals. Thus, while 
the Greek temple rested firmly on the soil, as though it 
would embody the sentiment of natural religion, the Chris- 
tian dome and spire seem to belong to the sphere of the 
.supernatural, and to carry along with them the hopes and 
aspirations of the worshipper. Thus, too, while antique 
art has had its day in the sensuous but faultless forms of 
beauty, and Catholic art its ideal in the Madonna, and in the 
wondrous mystic face of the child Jesus, we cannot doubt 
that a higher style of Christian art is yet to appear, to wit 
ness to the inspiration and the power of a purer faith. 

But language is the most wonderful of all human crea- 
tions ; and the literature of a people is the grandest of all 
works of art, for it is the fullest expression of the national 
life. Its prose gives us the great deeds of the past or the 
present, or the results of pure thought in philosophy and 
in science. Its poetry gives us thought and feeling, senti- 
ment and passion, crystallized in forms of marvellous power 
and loveliness. And its works of fiction embody, at the 
will of the writer, the historical, the speculative, and the 
p')etic elements. But yet the literature of any people is 
the one monument on which all her men of literary genius 
have worked through all the centuries of her life. Chris- 
tendom, too, has its literature, — the last growing product 
of its faith. Now, this is pervaded by a sense of the 
divine, and by an increasing reverence for humanity 



208 BVIDBNCES OF CITRISTIANITY. 

The cosmic element gives place to the theistic. The lit- 
erature of the modern period is more fully pervaded hy 
the consciousness of an infinite personal presence than that 
of the classic period. The other feature is no less striking. 
There is a truer idea of the worth and dignity of man, and 
a purer and deeper sympathy with his woes, than is ex- 
pressed in the writings of the ancients. We have a clear 
recognition of the rights of all, and a loving compassion 
for the misfortunes of all, instead of the deification of the 
few and the scorn of the many, instead of the hopeless 
sorrow over man's ills, or that remorseless contempt for 
his character, which marked the literature of Greece and 
of Rome. 

The adaptation of Christianity to the moral necessities 
and susceptibilities of the individual soul, has been so often 
involved in this and the preceding chapters, that it need 
not be here formally presented. As a social and religious 
being, too, man needs a leader who shall be one with him 
in sympathy, and yet who shall so realize his ideals, and 
so exalt his possibilities, as to be forever the great centrr 
of attraction for humanity. But the grave questions which 
here press upon our attention are to be considered in the 
last section of this work. 

But Christianity does not cherish simply the passive 
virtues. Christian life is made to culminate in action. 
The will yields to God. Just here the religion of Jesus 
does meet a real demand of our nature. It gives ua 
something to do. Man wishes to live a worthy life. He 
cannot do so unless the little events which make up our 
daily existence are ennobled. This is done by Christian- 
ity; for every honest pursuit is dealt with as a divine 
calling, and every duty has a divine blessing. A divine 



CHRISTIANITT A WORLD POWER. 209 

joy is connected with all right living and doing. Oui 
responsibilities are enlarged, our cares increased, and our 
sympathies rendered broader and purer bj our hopes and 
heliefs. The law of self-sacrifice opens a noble career to 
many great natures. It is only Christianity that afibrds 
any chance for moral heroism, or that can inspire men and 
women with unselfish benevolence. 

But one point is not to be overlooked. Man is more 
than an individual, however gifted, more even than a 
person moving from his own centre and regnant in his 
own domain. He is also a nature determined by the social 
forces beneath him and around him. He is a sharer in 
the common life of the society to which he belongs. He 
is the heir of all the past. Many of his greatest moral 
possessions have fallen to him by inheritance. Christian- 
ity does not turn aside from its legitimate path to reconcile 
the law of liberty with the law of necessity. Its spirit is 
practical, and not speculative. But it recognizes the bond 
of blood as well as the bond of virtue. It admits a com- 
munity of life, and its bearing on the ultimate destiny of 
the individual. It adjusts itself to the fact that the race- 
life has fallen from its original level, and that it needs 
restoration. This must come from without and from 
above. It must be the deed-act of God. Christ, then, 
recreates our nature, and founds a new humanity. He 
restores the lost fellowship on a new and higher basis. 
He carries with him our common nature into the spiritual 
world, and forms a new gathering centre in the very pres- 
ence of God. He incarnates the spiritual elements of hia 
consciousness in the church he has founded, and makes 
hh OTTn life the source of all the higher \ife of humanity. 
So Christ touches the hidden springs of our social ex* 
18* 



210 EVIDENCEa OF CHRISTIANITY, 

istence, as the conscience and the heart, the affection and 
the will of the individual man. 

All other religions have been the resultant of the co- 
existence and coworking of the depravities and aspirations 
of the people among whom they originated. Thus they 
have been only in a very superficial manner adapted even 
to their own times ; for they seldom address humanity, 
and they never exalt her. The man is lost in the citizen, 
and the individual is sunk in the state, or his intrinsic 
greatness and worth are sacrificed to the lower side of his 
nstture. They have been national and local in their char- 
acter. They must grow on their native soil. If they are 
transplanted to a foreign clime, they are sure to die. 
Thus Mahomedanism belonged to the East, and could not 
maintain itself in Western Europe. Its civilization only 
flashed with a brief and unwonted splendor, and then died 
out forever. It now exhibits in its recandescence a re- 
markable spectacle. The Turks have held one of the 
fairest portions of Europe for some four centuries, — cen- 
turies of great progress. They had inherited, or might 
have inherited, the culture of their co-religionists. 
The soil, the climate, the location, and the natural re- 
sources of the country, ought to have made Turkey one of 
the ruling powers on the continent. But what is the fact 
in the case ? All the progress which has been made is 
owing to an external pressure and influence, which have 
been telt in opposition to the authority of the Koran itself. 
She exists to-day by the sufferance of the great powers, — ■ 
a sufferance made possible by their mutual jealousies. 

But Christianity, unlike all other religions, was designed 
for no one nation and adapted to no privileged class, but 
suited to all men, wherever found, and so bears on its very 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER. 211 

front the stamp of universality. In brief, it is prophetic 
of its own great future, and as a world-power must swaj 
the centuries. 

SECTION SECOND. 

rrS HISTORICAL TRIUMPHS. 

Christianity must, as we have elsewhere shown, organize 
itself in a divine society, else its forces are dissipated, 
nttd its power wasted. It must voice itself not only in the 
fixed form of a dead language, but in the living church. 
It must have an organism suited to its genius, and to the 
sphere of its existence and its activity. Every society of 
Jesus, organized in his spirit, and after his principles, is 
God's great agency for the conquest of the world. Its 
Sabbaths, with their historical and prophetic associations, 
its sacred seasons of worship, its memorial and symbolic 
rites, its consecrated ministry and membership, make 
Christianity the great aggressive and renewing power in 
human society. Its law-book and its church make it a per- 
manent historical religion, destined, if from God, to realize 
its claims to universal acceptance. We are to test this 
power by an appeal to the past and to the present. 

It is to be noted, that the mere spread of any religion 
is no proof of its divinity. That may depend in part on a 
resort to a.uthority and force ; and in part on its adaptation 
to the prejudices and passions of the community to whom 
it is addressed ; and in part on its real superiority to those 
forms of belief which it supersedes. Thus even the mini- 
mum of truth may acquire, within a narrow circle, and for 
a limited time, the maximum of social power and influence. 
These principles are illustrated in a great degree in the 



212 EVIDENCES OF CBRISTIANITT, 

career of Mahometanism in the East, and in the rise and 
spread of Mormonism in the West. But when a religion 
conquers by its own spiritual agency alone ; when it con- 
demns at once the passions of the people, and the creeds of 
their leaders, and the policy of the state ; and when, too, it 
elevates humanity in all directions, and helps man to become 
himself, — then it vindicates its claims to a divine origin. 
The obstacles to the spread of Christianity were so 
numerous and so deeply rooted in the old Roman society, 
that it would have come to a speedy and ignominious end 
had it not been supernatural in its origin and character. 
To conquer heathenism was not to change a common opin- 
ion, or to overthrow any civil institutions, but to revolu- 
tionize and reconstruct the entire social fabric. Tt waa to 
subdue prejudices, to originate new modes of thought, to 
start new currents of feeling, and to create new springs 
of action ; for the heathen worship was embedded in the 
national rites and usages, was authorized by the goveru- 
ment, was sanctioned by a rich and varied literature, waa 
supported by all the allurement of art, was associated 
with the greatness and glory of the state, and was thus 
wrought into the very life of the people. The entire 
community, however divided between the sceptical leader, 
and the superstitious mass of their countrymen, were united 
in their opposition to Christianity. While the Jew hated 
it as an apostasy from the religion of his fathers, the 
Gentile scorned it as the offspring of Jewish superstition ; 
the philosopher looked down on it as a species of morose 
fanaticism, and the entire literary class deplored its spread 
as the death of all culture ; the citizens felt that it was a 
social pest, the cause of all their calamities; and the great 
body of the people spurned it as a religion without a 



CaRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER. 213 

temple and without an altar, and so as atheistic ; the 
priests despised it as a worship without the sanction of 
the state, and without the authority of antiquity; the 
magistrate persecuted it as revolutionary and disorganiz- 
ing in its tendencies. The crowds of brutalized idlers 
were ready to wreak their vengeance on the professors of 
the new faith as opposed to their vicos and their amuse- 
ments ; and the jugglers and artisans, and all the trades 
which were favored or supported by the idolatrous prac- 
tices of the age, arrayed themselves in deadly hostility to 
tho Christian religion. Still, Christianity without any 
foreign aid, by reason of its own exhaustless spiritual en- 
irgy, and in spite of the violence and of the seductions of 
gOTernment, and in spite, too, of the horror of the stake 
and the arena, and of the calumnies and sophistries of 
aagan apologists, moved steadily on to universal dominion. 
The concurring external conditions which favored its 
introduction in the Roman Empire only made its recep- 
tion possible. They showed that the time of its appear- 
ing was providential, and gave one mark of its divine 
jrigin. But even the deeper causes which favored its 
diffusion witness to its truth. These were the general 
enlightenment, the growing sentiment of humanity, and the 
yearnings and aspirations of nobler souls. Thousands 
found their rest only in the religion of Jesus. A great 
social crisis had come, — when the forces of evil seemed 
ready to engulf all that was good ; when the rising tides 
of corruption were ready to sweep away the growing 
ideals of truth and of goodness, — the crisis which was to 
put to a crucial test all the religions of the then civilized 
world. Christianity alone stood that test. It became the 
cement of a new society. But the glory of this new* 



214 EVIDENCES OF C/IRTSTIAMTT. 

created social life cannot be accredited to the death of 

the old civilization. The soil must be prepared, but the 
germs of life are in the seeds of truth which a foreign 
hand has planted. 

In three hundred years after Paul had entered the city 
of the Caesars the conflict had virtually closed. The in- 
telligence of the community had been won, and the masa 
of the people who thronged the cities accepted the Chris- 
tian faith. Christianity came forth from sanctuaries un- 
consecrated, save as Christian homes, to take possession of 
the deserted temples of heathendom. It passed from the 
catacombs to the basilicas of Rome, and soon became the 
recognized religion of the empire. Its presence was felt, 
as a saving power, from the shores of Britain to the des- 
erts of Africa, from the pillars of Hercules to the plains 
of the Euphrates. This wonderful triumph had been 
gained, not by the favor of the state, not by the strength 
of an organization, not by an accommodation to the passions 
and superstitions of the people, but chiefly by the preach- 
ing of the cross, by the unselfish lives of Christian disci- 
ples, and by the saintly heroism of confessors and martyrs. 
But these causes were secondary in their character, and 
derived their real efficiency from the presence of a living 
Christ. 

But Paganism was hardly uprooted ere a new and un- 
tried conflict awaited the Christian church. The contest 
with the civilization of the South was followed by a strug- 
gle with the barbarism of the North. The wild hordes 
from beyond the Danube utterly overthrew the Western 
Empire, and even threatened the destruction of the entire 
culture of the classic period. Christianity must save it- 
self in saving society. Had it not been divine, it would 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER* 215 

have gone down, with all the treasures of literature and of 
art, in the mightj convulsions of the times. The currents 
of barbaric life would have swept it awaj, and all that the 
historic nations had gathered for their successors, had not 
the religion of Christ held within itself enduring vital 
forces. But these inroads were providential. Chris tianitj^ 
needed fresh material. It found tliat in the energy and 
the endurance of these northern tribes. But it gained 
even more than these. Civilization had been saved by the 
empire at the expense of liberty. This was restored to 
the public life by the Germanic nations. Christianity ap- 
propriated this essential condition of all progress. It hal- 
lowed also the old Teutonic devotion to woman, and freed 
it, at the same time, from the coarseness which belonged to 
the manners of these barbarians. It resumed its missionary 
zeal. The monastery was planted in the wilderness, a.^d 
became a school of industry and a csntre of Christian i a- 
fluence. Here men labored and studied and prayed and 
taught. In a thousand ways, legitimate and illegitimate, 
Christianity worked at the fountain-head of all the groat 
states which make up modern Christendom. And it wd% 
able to build up these states, in spite of the errors of 
doctrine and of practice which marred both the beauty 
and the power of its life. 

And here the fact is to be noted that Christianity had 
to pass through the ordeal of its own corruptions. All 
other religions had died under the process of any radical 
reform. Now nothing shows more fully the inherent vi- 
tality of the religion of Christ than its own restorative 
power. The fact that it could exorcise the demoniac spirit 
of the hierarchy ; that it could throw off the subtle and 
the monstrous errors of the schoolmen ; that it could rid 



216 EVIDENCES OF christianitt. 

itself of the worship of relics and of the idolatrous homage 
paid to the Virgin, — gives a sure promise of its ultimate 
and complete triumph over all opposing forces. The Ref- 
ormation, then, of the sixteenth century, carrying with 
it the more intelligent half of Christendom, is a historical 
proof of the divinity of the Christian religion. 

But though Christianity was early corrupted, yet it has 
wrought wonders in human society. It has elevated 
woman from her condition as a chattel and a drudge, and 
made her the companion of man ; it has removed the bru- 
tal sports which disgraced Rome in the very days of her 
glory; and it has abolished serfdom and slavery from 
nearly all the civilized states of the world. It has pro- 
foundly quickened the spirit of humanity, checking the 
tyranny of princes, enlarging the privileges of the indi- 
vidual, mitigating the horrors of war, and founding every- 
where the hospital and the asylum for the more unfortunate 
of our race. In this last respect Christianity is thoroughly 
humanitarian in its character. It alone of all religions had 
in the very centre of its nature a fountain of charity for all 
men ; for though Nerva introduced into his government a 
provision for the children of the poor, and though Trajan 
made it an imperial institution, yet all this was a matter of 
state policy rather than the dictate of a humane and sym- 
pathizing spirit. A school for the education of idiots, 
and an asyium for the training of the deaf and dumb, 
would have been a moral impossibility. The state had no 
motive to found such institutions. The very best men 
among the millions of heathen who thronged the city of 
Rome would have laughed at the idea of organizing a so- 
ciety for the furtherance of any such charitable object. 

It has become the great moral constitutive force in every 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER, 217 

civilized state. It gives a spiritual centre of unity in the 
worship it established, and also creates a feeling of commu- 
nitj of life among the nations of the earth . It insists on the 
duty of all to labor, and on the right of none to be idle. It 
maintains that wealth cannot be used for selfish purposes 
without endangering the social fabric. It stamps itself on 
the legislation of the country and on the administration of 
the laws. It stimulates learninor and founds schools. It 
exalts the language and creates a literature. It condemns 
all forms of vice, but opens fountains of charity for all 
forms of human misery. It makes loyalty to God the 
governing principle of the state as well as of the individual. 
But Christianity makes itself felt far outside of the 
church, or of the direct influence of its ministrations. 
Men who never enter its sanctuaries, and never open its 
Bible, and never read its tracts, yet breathe the atmos- 
phere it has generated. They belong by birth to a 
Christianized nation, and share in its common life ; for a 
nation in the course of many centuries becomes Christian 
by the spiritual transforming life-process which moulds its 
character. It does not take this name because its leaders 
are Christians, or even because its public documents recog- 
nize Christian obligations ; but because its common ideals, 
its common beliefs, and its common tendencies, are Chris- 
tian Thus it is that infidels are indebted to the very reli- 
gion they reject for all that is purest and noblest in their 
writings. And thus, too, those reformers and philanthro- 
pists who work apart and aloof from every Christian or- 
ganization, are dependent for success on that sense of duty 
and that sentiment of charity which Christianity has in- 
fused into the veins and arteries of social life. In fact, 
the religion of Jesus, that they so ungratefully ignore, had 



218 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

SO educated their consciences, and so softened their sympa^ 
thies, and so intensified their convictions, as to have given 
them all the reformatory power they possess. Christianity 
creates currents of thought and feeling which noiselessly 
pervade the life of the nation, and save it from its own 
natural tendencies to corruption. It generates forces and 
reveals their tremendous power only when some gigantic 
social wrong necessitates a moral convulsion. It forms a 
puhlic conscience, as is seen in the general maxims of mo- 
rality and in the sentiments of honesty and of honor whicl 
are common to the entire community, even in those ex' 
cesses which come from an outraged public sentiment., — 
a phenomenon quite uncommon in heathendom. It ii fihih 
public conscience which moderates the heat of passion, re- 
strains all forms of self-seeking, and which gives support 
and vigor to the authority of the civil law. It gives se- 
curity to private and public credit, and makes passports 
and treaties inviolable. Its lofty religious sentiment hu- 
manizes society, ameliorates manners, and creates kindlj 
sympathies and charities in every neighborhood. Christi- 
anity is the life of every political or civil reform. It favors 
such reforms. It demands the best means for securing the 
highest ideals. It thus leads the nation along the path of 
freedom and of virtue to its own highest goal ; but it 
ever subordinates the individual nation to humanity, for it 
recognizes the brotherhood of nations as a governing ele- 
ment in the foreign policy of every political community. 
This participation in the life of a Christianized people is 
not to be confounded with the conscious fellowship of the 
soul with its God. 

If it be asked why has not the religion of Jesus made 
wider conquests, and why its network of missions has not 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER. 219 

produced even better and richer results than it has, the 
answer is at hand. It must submit to the law of human 
progress. Such is the divine plan. It cannot be spread 
at the expense of the destruction of human freedom and the 
annihilation of the dignity and worth of human nature. 
Ritter, in his ''History of Philosophy," strikingly remarks: 
" The great influence of Christianity would be less ques- 
tioned if it had not penetrated so deeply and so widely 

into our entire being We habitually bear about 

with us much that is exclusively Christian, which, how- 
ever, having, as it were, become a second nature, is no 
longer looked upon as in any way an influence of Chris- 
tianity, but is regarded as an ordinary element of man's 
character." 

The extent and character of its triumphs cannot be 
ascribed to any other cause. The inadequacy of philoso- 
phy, or of any form of natural religion, or of any social 
reorganization, has already been shown. Now, the two 
great forces of social life are industry and intelligence. 
Commerce and trade are their direct fruits. But they 
fall, and must ever fall, when left to the natural course 
of things, under the ruling principle of human nature, — 
our common selfishness. These pursuits do most certainly 
lift communities out of the narrowness of isolation, and 
out of the ferocities of barbarism. They often engender 
the habits of honor and honesty, and still more often create 
that efieminacy of life which betokens, as it hastens, the 
overthrow of the state. The civilization which rests on 
such a foundation is always material in its character. The 
history of the great commercial states of antiquity veri- 
fies what we have stated ; and the tendency of Briticih 
dominion in the East, till Christianity interposed, abun- 



220 EVIDENCES OF CnRISTIANITY. 

dantly confirms the same position. All that is great in life, 
or in art, would be purely impossible in a civilization 
founded on industrial pursuits alone. The heroic o? 
saintly elements in common life, and the splendid achieve 
ments in art, have come from a civilization pre-eminently 
Christian. 

It remains to be considered whether Christianity has 
triumphed in the field of controversy as Avell as in the 
sphere of life. Has it successfully met the literary 
attacks of the different schools of doubt and unbelief? 
The history of Christian apologetics would form a work by 
ttself, and a work, too, of great interest. We can barely 
touch a few of the main points in that history. 

The pagan apologists denounced the Christian religion 
as revolutionary in its character, and unpatriotic in its 
cipirit. The church fathers, in reply, showed that it was 
slot violent in its methods, as its process Avas from Avithin 
outward, and not the reverse; but that the individual and 
social changes it wrought were necessitated by a higher 
ideal, and were themselves the pledges of a firmer and 
better government. To the charge that the lower classes, 
and even the vicious, were invited to join the new faith, it 
was said, Christianity puts all on the same level before 
God, and so repels none, but seeks to save even the lowest. 
To the calumnies, which were so often reiterated in the 
pagan writings, the Christian apologists opposed the purity 
of both their faith and their lives, and exposed in re- 
turn the follies of the popular belief They insisted on 
the need of a revelation, and on the evidential value of 
miracles and prophecy, particularly of the latter. In one 
respect only both parties agreed in admitting the possi- 
bility and utility of the supernatural. 



CHR18TIAKITT A WORLD POWER, 221 

The Neo-Platonists, uniting Greek culture with Oriental 
speculation, and unconsciously borrowing much from 
Christianity, made a last stand for the old faith. They 
sought, by resolving all into allegory and symbol and 
myth, to eliminate from Paganism all its grosser features. 
But many of the fables would not yield a higher sense, 
and the gods lost their hold on the popular heart, when 
they lost their concrete significance. In vain they called 
up the heroes of their ancestral religion. Apollonius, of 
Tyana, could not for a moment take the place of Christ 
in the affection and reverence of the people. Neo-Plato- 
nism, in attempting to transmute the old religion into a 
philosophy, extinguished forever the last signs of its life. 
Most of the fathers looked quietly on this self-immola- 
tion. Eusebius alone made an extended reply, showing 
how unreliable was the reputed life of Apollonius, and 
how far below the miracles of Christ were the supposed 
marvels of his life. 

The defenders of Mahometanism admitted the divine 
mission of Jesus, but insisted that he was subordinate to 
Mahomet himself They attacked many of the Christian 
doctrines, but especially that of the triunity. These at- 
tacks, however, were weak compared with the countei 
attacks which Christian writers made on the sensuous 
aspects of the Mahometan religion, and on the claims of its 
founder as an inspired and authoritative teacher. They 
insisted, too, that there was no prediction of his coming 
m the Old Testament or in the New, that his doctrinea 
were not in harmony with the older revelations, and that 
they were not authenticated by miracles. 

The Deists admitted the existence of God, but rejected 
a supernatural revelation. This they rejected, chiefly on 



222 BVWENCB8 OF cnmsTTAmTT. 

the supposed inadequacy of evidence, and needlessness of 
its teachings. The answers given to these objections were 
full and satisfactory. It was shown, beyond all honest 
doubt, that there was a necessity for new life and new 
light, with new and higher sanctions ; that the evidence for 
the truth of revealed religion was sufficient to make it 
obligatory on all men to receive it whenever and wherever 
presented ; and that like objections could be made against 
the course of nature itself, and the natural religion which 
the l)eists themselves professed to admit. The result 
of this controversy was clear and decided. Deism was 
wanting in philosophic depth, since it denied the imma- 
nence of God in nature and in life, overlooking the prin- 
ciple that whatever is absolutely dependent on a cause for 
its origin must also be dependent on the same cause for 
its continuance. It was equally wanting in openness and 
fairness, since it magnii&ed the difficulties which touched 
only the surface of the question at issue ; and, consciously 
or unconsciously, belittled those central evidences which in 
such a case must ever be final and decisive. The Deists 
were not only worsted in the conflict, but were treated 
with pitiless contempt by the sceptics who followed them. 
The last foe which entered the lists against the Chris- 
tian religion was Pantheism. Its attitude was the oppo- 
site of Deism, since it ignored the transcendence of God. 
It thus swept away the objective foundation of all religion. 
The answer to the fundamental principle of Pantheism may 
be summarily stated thus : It was a monstrous assump- 
tion, counter to the conviction of the reality of an objec- 
tive world, of our own independent selfhood, and of the 
fact of human sin and guilt. But its two chief aspects 
were philosophic rationalism and critical rationalism. 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWMB, 228 

The first would make Christianity a step and a stage 
in the great process of the world's development. But 
what step introduced it, and what step will follow and 
transcend it? Could there be anything more unhistori- 
cal and more unscientific than this assumption? Christ 
was not the creature of any age, still less the child of a 
culture eighteen centuries old. He was the creator of a 
new epoch, — the beginning of an endless cycle. It is 
always easy to assign men to their respective ages ; for, 
however great they are, they receive in an untold measure 
more than they give. But, in the natural development of 
humanity from the heads of the race, no place can be 
found for Jesus of Nazareth. He inherits all of human- 
ity by a supernatural birth, and glorifies it all by a super- 
natural power. Christ is not evolved from humanity, but 
a new humanity is, so to speak, evolved from him. 

The second has made the credibility of the sacred records 
the chief object of attack. The rationalistic critics have 
assumed that all the narratives of miracles were unhis- 
torical. This assumption has put them in the aj^iitude of 
advocates, of polemics, and not at all of earnest and honest 
inquirers after the truth. Thus the force of external 
evidence has been made to give way to the necessities of 
their theory ; and different, and often antagonistic, shifts 
have been resorted to in order to account for the narratives 
of the Gospels. Discrepancies have been sought for and 
intensified, and the underlying harmonies have been left 
all unnoticed. The most violent suppositions have been 
resorted to, and the most far-fetched interpretations given 
to isolated passages, for the purpose of throwing as much 
as possible of the New Testament into the second century 
of our era. But these rationalists have been answered by 



224 BVTDENCBS OF CffRISnAJfrrTY, 

men of equal learning and of a sounder philosophy. The 
result is that the New Testament stands on a firmer and 
broader scientific foundation than ever before. Defeated in 
their efforts to take possession of the citadel of our faith 
thej seek now to undermine the historical character of the 
Pentateuch and other outworks of Christianity. Such 
questions, though they have an important apologetic bear- 
ing, may safely be left to the province of biblical criti- 
cism. 

The conflict with Judaism has been intermittent all 
through the history of the church. It has hinged in the 
main on the interpretation of Messianic prophecies. It 
does not belong to our plan to enter into the nature and 
results of this struggle. We only remark, that the numer- 
ous converts from the Jews to Christianity have felt that, 
without the historical Christ, Judaism must remain for- 
ever an unfulfilled prophecy. 

In closing this section, we may well ask ourselves if the 
past triumphs of Christianity through so many centuries, 
against so many foes, in the sphere of life, and in the 
field of thought, is not a guaranty of its ultimate and 
complete victory as a world-power ? This leads to another 
and kindred question : Will Christianity be as trium- 
phant in the distant future, under all possible circum- 
stances and contingencies, as it has been in the past? 
This opens to us the next and last section of this work. 

SECTION THIBD. 
CHBISTIANITT A FINALITY. 

It is not necessary that a religion should be final in 
order to be divine. The earliest theophanies were only 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD T'OWER, 225 

preludes to Judaism ; and Judaism itself was only a piopa- 
ration for Christianitj. But jet the religion introduced bj/ 
Moses was perfect, in reference both to its immediate and 
to its ultimate design. It was only imperfect when viewed 
in a light in which it did not present itself We can thus 
admit its provisional character, and still recognize its 
divinity. Christianity might have been an introduction 
to a higher economy, and so might still have been from 
God. In such a case, however, its nature and its claims 
would have been Avholly different from what we actually 
have in the religion of Jesus. 

But Christianity does present itself as God's last mes- 
sage to man. It claims to be the crowning and complete 
fulfilment of the past. It foretells no intermediate rev- 
elation which, in the distant future, is to take its place, 
but only its own struggles and its own millennial glories. 
Its one great promise is the spiritual presence of Christ 
till the end of probation : and its one great prophecy is 
Christ's personal return, to pronounce by his very presence 
the final judgment. The great Messianic period, which con- 
nects the first coming of our Lord with his second appear- 
ance, is always spoken of as the last grand era in the 
history of the race. The ultimate destinies of men in 
another Avorld are made to depend on the reception or the 
rejection of the Christian religion. The church itself em- 
bodies the life of Christ, and makes his unembodied influ- 
ence felt far and near ; and its great symbols are to remain 
till the end of the world, and so seem to represent the final 
kingdom of God. Christianity, then, in its very nature, 
as an economy introduced by the Son of God, and carried 
un by his spiritual presence, and destined to be transfig- 
ured in heaven, itself precludes any further and higher 



226 EfTDBNCES OF CFiniSTIANITY, 

dispensations of divine truth. He who admits the truth 
of Christianity must admit its finality. 

But is the view which Christianity presents of itself 
warranted by the facts in the case? Are all the con- 
ditions, on which it could claim to be the final expression 
of the divine will, fulfilled? The question remains to 
be answered. This answer is to be found in the folio win «; 
considerations : The very nature of Christianity deter- 
mines its destination. It has no internal weakness. It is 
not inconsistent, and so self-destructive. It is not incom- 
plete, so that its inadequacy should reveal itself more and 
nore. The sources of its life are not found in anything 
that is local or national, nor do they depend on any 
human organization or appliances ; else, in the course of 
oenturies, that life might be exhausted. But its centre is 
the person and the work of Christ, — the Christ of the 
past, of the present, and of the future. This centre 
determines all its principles and all its precepts, and so 
relates them as to form a living harmonious agency. It 
makes and fills a circle as wide and as advancing as 
humanity itself. It brings God to man, and man to God, 
and bridges over the chasm between heaven and earth. 
This living Person, the centre and substance of Chris- 
tianity, is the source of an endless life, and the ground of 
infinite hopes. 

The religion which best meets the essential religious 
wants of the race has the best guaranty of its perma- 
nency. These wants remain the same through all the 
ages ; for sin and guilt cannot be outgrown. Evolu- 
tion only brings out what is in the fontal source. Just 
BO long, then, as these elements enter into human life, 
just so long will there be the need of the reL'gion of re- 



CHRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER. 227 

demption. Humanity never will content itself with lesa 
than Christ. And can a greater than he appear, — one 
more the child of humanity, as well as the Son of God ? 
Will the natural development of the race — for the ob- 
jector here does not admit the supernatural — ever pro- 
duce a greater healer and a greater helper for the sinful 
and the lost, than the Man of Calvary ? 

The test of eighteen centuries is not without its bearing 
on the point at issue. Christianity has been tried in the 
furnace of persecution, and in the crucible of doubt. It 
has stood the misconceptions of friends, and the perver- 
sions of enemies. Parasitical errors have not eaten up its 
vitality, nor have the gross inconsistencies of its pro- 
fessors, nor the open apostasy of some of its leaders, un- 
dermined its power and influence. It has survived the 
controversies of opposing sects, and the bitterness of their 
representative champions. It has been called on to meet 
tribes and nations of the most diverse culture and institu- 
tions. The centuries have not left it behind. They have 
not even sensibly diminished the moral distance which 
originally separated Jesus from his followers. The re- 
ligion founded by him .was never so strong as it is to-day. 
It is for the sceptic, then, to show what new danger it will 
have to encounter in the future, fatal alike to its claims 
and to its power. 

But the religion which is to maintain itself hereafter 
must be in harmony with all that is true, and in antag- 
onism with all that is false, in the life and laws and insti- 
tutions of every people. It must be the common rallying 
centre against all forms of error and of injustice, against 
all wrongs, whether they be of society, or of the govern- 
ment, else the best men of the community will organize 



228 EVTDENCBS OF CHRISTIANITY, 

outside of its pale. It must take this stand bj virtue 
of its affiliation with all that is noble and pure in human 
endeavor. It must inspire all the humanitarian efforts 
for the elevation of the race. Christianity, as illustrated 
bj the life of its Founder, and as interpreted by its noblest 
representatives, does, without doubt, meet this condition 
of its continued life. All great moral reforms have been 
the acknowledged, or unacknowledged, creations of its 
spirit. All the great movements in society have resulted 
from the conscious, or unconscious, application of principles 
enunciated centuries ago by Jesus of Nazareth. All the 
elements of progress which have been evolved in the 
growth of society, or have been worked out by men of 
genius, or have been set free by the decay of systems of 
oppression, have been incorporated in the Christian relig- 
ion. Thus the principles of civil and religious freedom 
seized on by Rousseau and Voltaire, and prostituted by 
their disciples, in the excesses of the French Revolution, 
did, at last, find their real home in the bosom of the 
Christian church. They had gone out of their orbit, but 
were drawn back again as soon as the attracting power 
of Christian ideas made itself felt in society. And 
whatever of moral beauty, or of substantial value, can be 
found in the works of Newman, or of Parker, or of 
Comte, has its natural place in Christianity ; for none 
of them come up to Jesus in the depth and tenderness of 
his sympathy for man, or in the recognition of the grand 
possibilities of humanity. Such sceptics have their uses 
in the providence of God. They help to bring out in a 
bold relief some neglected truth of Christianity, or help to 
give a final expression to some unformulated doctrine of 
our common faith. In short, the principles of Christian 



rSRlSTIANlTT A WORLD POWER. 229 

iij are so central, so vital, and so increasingly fruitful, 
that they cannot fail in their application to meet the 
needs of every generation, and to accept, as the fruit of 
its own inspirations, whatever is noble in thought, or 
heroic in achievement. 

Christianity insures its perpetuity by the ease with 
which it affiliates with all the results of scientific research. 
It is impossible that the advance in science should ren- 
der religion superfluous, or in any way annul or weaken 
its claim to be of divine origin ; for all truth has two 
aspects : the scientific, and the religious. The cycles of 
phenomena which make up any special science, point to, 
and illustrate, a transcendent cause ; for they address 
both the intellect and the faith, both the constructive 
and the receptive sides of our nature, both the rational 
understanding and the religious sensibility. All the 
discoveries of science are the disclosures of a supreme in- 
telligence, — the revelations of infinite wisdom and love. 
Progress in pure science alone can never solve the mys- 
teries of life. The scientist, over whatever field he may 
traverse, can never pass the boundary which separates the 
natural from the supernatural. Thus the physiologist 
does at best but follow the telegraphic lines which con- 
nect the soul with the outward world. He marks their 
physical character, their changes, and their uses, and he 
notes their signs and signals ; but he never comes face to 
face with the invisible, personal agent who receives and 
send/} the messages. If he is a man of genius he may 
follow the border line which divides the physical from 
the spiritual, but he cannot go beyond that impassable 
limit. The naturalist, too, in his profoundest investiga- 
tions, only ascends the stream of life, but never reaches 
20 



230 EVIDENCES OF CnRISTIANITY, 

it3 hidden sourcGj nor does he anywhere cross to the oppo« 
site shore. But the sphere of the known necessitates 
always the sphere of the unknown; and it belongs to 
religion to reveal enough of this to form our faith and to 
regulate our life. Science, then, can only bring out more 
and more fully the extent of our ignorance, and can only 
awaken more thoroughly onr spiritual aspirations, and ex- 
pose in a clearer light the imperiousness of our needs, 
Such is always the case when the facts and truths of 
science are allowed to address our religious consciousness. 
Every science, then, may be a school-master to lead the 
soul to its God. Some of the minor results may lead the 
interpreter to modify the meaning he will give to various 
passages of Scripture. They may even change his opinion 
on questions of chronology, or possibly go so far as to 
affect his theory of inspiration ; but these effects are inci- 
dental, compared with the general and profound religious 
impression which all the sciences must make on candid 
and open souls. This is not inconsistent with the fact 
that an exclusive devotion to any one pursuit tends to 
narrow the vision, nor with the other fact that a personal 
repugnance to some of the aspects of religion will often 
make a man of science hostile to the claims of the pure 
and simple religion of Jesus. Christianity, then, hails 
with joy the growing enlightenment which advancing 
science is sure to create. Perhaps no one natural agency 
will do so much for her in the coming future as the 
crowning science of all, — social science ; for, as the 
facts of life and of history are classified, and made to 
reveal the great laws which control communities and 
nations, it will become more and more apparent that the 
Christ of history transcends these laws, and that hia 



CBRISTIANITY A WORLD POWER, 23 i 

character and influence in the world belong to the region 
of the supernatural. In fact, the presence of that super- 
natural element, blending with the elements of our com- 
mon humanity, will always make that science itself more 
or less incomplete and inadequate. 

But if it be said that the religion of the distant future 
must be the absolute religion, we answer, though we do 
do not like the expression, such is Christianity, — Chris- 
tianity perfectly comprehended and completely realized in 
the life of humanity. There can be no other. There are 
no elements in any other system of belief which need to be 
appropriated and utilized. An eclectic religion was possi- 
ble only in heathendom, where all was on the same level, 
and where all was the outgrowth of the varying union of 
our common depravities and of our common aspirations. 
But philosophy cannot construct a religion. It cannot do 
this, even when moving in the light of Chri3tian faith, and 
even when drawing its profoundest utterances from that 
faith. Such a religion would want every essential which 
the soul needs. It wants a historical basis. It could 
have no objective media, — no deed-acts of God, — no 
facts of history of transcendent worth and influence. It 
would want a divine life. A religion which does not 
bring God into actual contact with the consciousness of his 
creature is simply dead. It matters not what form such a 
religion would take on, — whether it would be the worship 
of genius, or the worship of humanity, with the canoniza- 
tion of all her great heroes, — it would utterly fail to satisfy 
the cry of humanity, or even to stifle the prolonged wail of 
the centuries, which would signalize the extinction of a su- 
pernatural religion. The race will never be content with 
anything less than Christ. Such a religion might create 



232 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 

a school for the few, but it could not erect a church for thu 
many. But if philosophy cannot pass for religion, can she 
dispense with it? Now what has she to offer? Only 
broad generalizations and bold speculations. But what 
comes of them, singly or blended? Can they efface the 
religious element from human nature, and satisfy the crav- 
ings and yearnings of humanity by an ideal system, how- 
ever lofty and pure it may be ? How idle the expectation ! 
How empty the dream ! The re-entrance of God into 
human nature and human history has given to Christianity 
just that realistic character which secures for it an end- 
less life. 

Christianity, then, is to be perpetual. It is ultimate 
and final. We are not called on to believe that any one 
church organization is to be the final one, or that any one 
written creed is to be the fixed and permanent one. The 
form of statement is provisional. Still, every lover of the 
truth, with any breadth of comprehension, must look with 
reverence on the great men of the church who have led 
their age in religious opinion, and who have helped their 
successors to broader apprehensions. It is only the relig- 
ion of Christ, as presented by himself and by those who 
stood nearest to him and felt most fully the inspirations of 
his presence, that can claim to be the last message of God 
to the race. 

The evidences for the divine origin and character of the 
Christian religion are accumulative, and in reality ex- 
haustless. They will advance in interest and in value as 
the generations of men roll on. Each age will have just 
that weight of evidence which it can well bear. It could 
not be increased without interfering with that divine plan, 
by which God guards the freedom of man, and by whicli 



cnmsTiAnnTY a world power. 233 

he puts him in probation in the acceptance or the rejection 
of the religion of his Son. One is justified in rejecting 
CI ristianity only when he has demonstrated its falsity ; 
only when, in spite of ail the evidenceSj he clearly sees that 
it is of human origin. Such are the consequences which 
hang on the practical refusal or admission of its claims, 
that a slight presumption in its favor should govern the 
faith and control the life. But when its falsity is, in the 
light of the facts, vastly more incredible than its truth 
can be, then not to receive it is a crime against our 
Maker and our own souls ! And when, again, it is abso- 
lutely inconceivable that the religion of Jesus should be 
false, how can we palliate our guilt in not accepting with 

an ADORING AND GRATEFUL HEART ITS PROFFERED 
TERMS OP MERCY? 



INDEX. 



■•♦•- 



Paob 

Academy of France, report against 
spontaneous generation, .... 13 

Accumulative nature of Chris- 
tian evidences, 19 

Accuracy of the Evangelists in 
respect to geography, .... 63 

climate, 61 

products of Palestine, .... 54 

political affairs, 65 

domestic and social usages, . . 66 
of Acts in notices of Greek and 
Eoman life and manners, ... 67 
of the Epistles. Impossibility of 
imposture in this class of writ- 
ings, 68 

Acquisition of property a duty, . 157 

Acts of the Apostles, accu- 
racy of, 67 

Adaptations of nature a^'usted 

to each other, 27 

in nature not the result of self- 
adjusting forces, 31 

Adjustment of the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms to each other, . 28 

^Esthetic element in our nature 
not ignored by Christianity, . . 206 

Agassiz on transmutation of spe- 
cies, 92 

Alogi rejected the Gospel of John, &7 

Analogy of nature points to im- 
mortality, 39 

Ancient Latin versions of the 
New Testament testify to the 
Canon, 69 

Animal Life supported by or- 
ganic matter, 28 

Ansel^m's argument for the exist- 
ence of God inconclusive, ... 19 



FAOl 

Apocalypse required Euch a man 
as John, for its authorship, . . 61 

Apocryphal gospels presuppose 
the genuine originals, 63 

Apostolical Fathers, their testi- 
mony to the Canon, 64 

Argyll, Duke of, on man's place 

in nature, 43 

on transmutation of species, . . 94 

Art ennobled by Christianity, . . 206 

Artistic spirit absent from the 
New Testament writings, ... 48 

Associated philanthropy, its place 
in Christianity, 158 

Atheism the alternative of reject- 
ing Christianity, 113 

Attacks upon Christianity by Pa- 
gans, 220 

Neo-Platonists, 221 

Mahometans, 221 

Deists, 221 

Pantheists, 222 

Jews, 224 

Augustus sanctioned concubin- 
age, 190 

Authority divine, needed to in- 
terpret the facts of revelation ; . 126 
and to expound Christianity, . . 12G 
divine, promised to the apostles, 
and claimed by them, 126 

Authority the rtedful comple- 
ment of impulse, 149 

Basilides a witness for John's 
Gospel, 67 

Beauty, an end in nature, reveal- 
ing the intelligence of the artist, 27 



$36 



INDEX. 



Beneficence should be direct 
and personal, not by proxy, . . 158 

Body, the spiritual, how related to 
the physical, 139 

Branis on the decay of Roman 
civilization, 191 

CiESAR, Julius, a disbeliever in the 
immortality of the soul, .... 34 

Calling, each has his appointed, . 156 
object of, ultimate and immedi- 
ate, 156 

Cause, first and final, commensu- 
rate and identical, 30 

Causes of the decline and corrup- 
tion of Roman civilization, . . 188 

Celsus admitted the authenticity 
of the sacred writings, .... 68 

Cerinthus, the fourth Gospel at 
tributed to him by the Alogi, . . 67 

Character of the New Testa- 
ment writings fixes their date, . 48 

Chinese faith in immortality why 
weak, 35 

Christ the permanent miracle of 

human history, 105 

sinless, 107 

sinless, or the worst of sinners, . 110 
reception of by his contempora- 
ries, how explained, 112 

the centre of all Christian doc- 
trines, 130 

Christian ideal of life compared 

with the stoic, 101 

church an indispensable embodi- 
ment of Chi-istianity, ..... 166 
its essential elements, .... 167 

Christianity, or Atheism, no 

middle ground, 113 

its relation to philanthropic asso- 
ciations, 158 

its relation to civil life, .... 159 
" " patriotism, . . .160 

to be judged in its totality, . . .130 
a clearer and more effective re- 
publication of natural religion, . 131 
alone reveals the sympathy of 

God, 132 

its redemptive agency, how ex- 
erted 136 



harmonizes human freedom and 

divine sovereignty, 138 

not a code of ethics, but the real- 
ized ideal of a divinely human 

life, 150 

a redemptive mediation, .... 203 
allays the evils of life by an indi- 
rect method, 205 

not the religion of a Class, tut of 

humanity, 205 

recognizes the sesthetic element 

in our nature, 206 

has ennobled art, 206 

has elevated literature, .... 207 
does not simply cherish the pas- 
sive virtues, but culminates in 

action, 208 

recognizes and remedies the fall 

of tlie race, 209 

regenerates society as well as the 

individual, 209 

a universal religion, 210 

its truth witnessed by the causes 
which favored its diffusion, . . . 213 
its victory over Roman civiliza- 
tion, 214 

its victory over northern barba- 
rism, .... 214 

its victory over its own corrup- 
tions, 215 

its relation to humanitarianism, . 216 

" " the public con- 
science, . . • 217 

its progress, why so slow, . . . 218 
Ritter's testimony to its influ- 
ence, 219 

attacks upon it by Pagans, . 220 
" « " Neo-Plato- 

nists, 221 

attacks upon it by Mahometans, . 221 
" « " Deists, . . .221 

" " " Pantheists, . 222 

" " " Jews, . . .224 

a finality, 225 

Church, its fcxindation and growth 
unaccountable on the sceptical 

theory, 109 

an indispensable embodiment of 

Christianity, 166 

its essential elements, .... 1.^' 



IITDBX, 



237 



Church, its ordinances, . . . . 169 

" ministry, 170 

" day of worship, 171 

" relation to voluntary associa- 
tions, 173 

its ideal imperfectly realized, . . 173 
" value and necessity, .... 174 
a universal spiritual empire, . . 17G 
founded on a recreated human- 
ity, 177 

not a communistic association, . 177 
" moral reform society, . . 177 
idea of, a spontaneous conception 

of its Founder, i;8 

not a mere idea, but a realization, 178 
a living organization, dependent 

on Christ as its life, 179 

its temporary imperfections and 
limitations anticipated by its 

Founder, 181 

its universality, 180 

Churches, equality of, .... 172 
fellowship of, 172 

t!iciiRO on the existence of God, 16, 17 

Civil life regulated by Chris- 
tianity, 159 

Civil authority to be obeyed, with 
what limitations, 160 

Civilization, modern, presup- 
poses a real, historical, sinless 
Christ, 109 

Clarke, Dr. Samuel, his ontologi- 
cal argument for the existence of 

. God, 21 

Clement of Alexandria, his testi- 
mony to the authenticity of the 
sacred writings, 65 

Climatic allusions in the Gospels, 
their truthfulness, 54 

Coincidences undesigned in the 
different books of the New Testa- 
ment, their significance, .... 59 

CoMTE, his hypothesis of three 
epochs in man's advancement, . 103 
obliged to admit the need of 
religion, 104 

Concubinage, sanctioned by Au- 
gustus, liQ 

Conversion of Paul not accounted 
for naturally or psychologically, . 74 



Corbigne, his testimony to the 
supernatural as an inductioij of 
science, 91 

CoRRUPriON of Koman civiliza- 
tion, its causes, 187 

CosMOLOGiCAL proof of the divine 
existence, 21 

Creation, presupposed in redemp- 
tion, 133 

Creuzer makes monotheism more 
ancient than polytheism, ... 19 



Dana, Prof., his testimony to the 
supernatural as an induction of 
science, 91 

Darwin on transmutation of spe- 
cies, 92 

Date of the New Testament writ- 
ings fixed by their composite dia- 
lect, 47 

their unartistic style, and their 
manifest freshness, 48 

Day of worship a constitutive ele- 
ment of the church, 171 

Decline of Roman civilization, its 
causes, 187 

Deistic view of God's relation to 

the world, 100 

attacks upon Chiistiauity, ... 19 

Delusion not prcdicable of the 
sacred writers, 71 

Descartj;s, his view of the proof 
of God's existence, 16 

Design, marks of in a designer do 
not need to be accounted for, . . .30 

Destiny of man realized not iu the 
race, but in the individual, ... 40 

Devklopmknt theory of the New 
Testament canon untenable, . . 81 
theory, scientific objections to it, 
" necessitates a beginning, 95 
" of Christian doctrine, in 
what sense progressive .... 128 

Dialect of the New Testament a 
compound of Greek, Hebrew, and 
Christian elements, 17 

Discrepancies in the Gospels no 
valid objection to their genuine- 
ness, 53 



238 



INDEX, 



DiSCREP INCIES in the New Testa- 
ment manuscripts insignificant, . 70 

Doctrine and miracle to be judged 
as a wtiole, and not merely in de- 
tail, 90 

Doctrine defined 125 

Christian, must have the sanction 

of inspiration, 127 

Christian, in what sense progres- 
sively developed, 128 

Doctrines of Christianity, their 
unity, 130 

Domestic and social usages accu- 
rately described by the sacred 
writers, 56 

Doubts, even on essential points, 
do not necessitate the rejection of 
Christianity, 130 



Early versions of the New Testa- 
ment witness to its historical 
character, 68 

Egyptians firm believers in im- 
mortality, why, 35 

Endless nature of future retribu- 
tions, 142 

Epictetus on virtue and on prayer, 162 

Equality of all men, stoic and 
Christian view of compared, . . 164 
of all churches, 172 

Ethnic and Jewish preparation 
for Christianity, how combined, . 200 

Evangelists write as witnesses, 
not as critics, nor as moralizers, . 52 

Evolution, theory of disproved 
by the incarnation, 133 

Exceptions to the general belief 
in God accounted for, 17 

Existence of God, method of 
proving it, , 13 

Expectation of future life, an ar- 
gument for the immortality of the 

soul, 34 

the strength of this expectation 
proportioned to the elevation of 
the moral life, 34 

Exposition of Christianity by the 
apostles free and popular, rather 
than formal and scientific, . . .127 



Faith the positive side of the 
Christian life, IIG 

Faith finds its highest expression 
in love, 116 

Family life regulated by Chris- 
tianity, , . 154 

Fathers, apostolical, their testi- 
mony to the canonical Scripture*. 64 

Fellowship of individual souls 
with Christ, the prime constitu- 
tive element of the Christian 

church, 168 

of all churches, 172 

Finality of Christianity argued 

from its nature, 226 

" " adaptation to human 

needs, 226 

from its past history, 227 

" " relation to social prog- 
ress, 227 

from its relation to scientific dis- 
covery, 229 

fromitsbeingtheabsolute religion, 231 

Forces, persistence of, only an- 
other name for the abiding ener- 
gy of God, 134 

Forgery out of the question in 
the case of the sacred writings, . 70 

Fraud pious, not admissible in the 
case of the NeAV Testament writ- 
ings, 71 

Freedom and sovereignty, how 
harmonized in Christianity, . . 138 

Generation spontaneous, rejected 
by the highe?t scientific authority, 134 

Geographical accuracy of the 
Evangelists, 53 

God, existence of, how proved, . 13 

origin of the idea of, 16 

Cicero on the existence of, . . 16, 17 
existence of, Descartes' method 

of proof, 16 

existence of, historical proof, . 16 
exceptions to the general belief 

in, accounted for, 117 

the infinite designer and architect 
not an effect to be accounted for 30 
personality of, an argument for 
theimmortality of the soul, . . 34 



INDEX. 



239 



Gk)D, moral proof of his existence , 31 
existence of, Kaut's argument, . 31 
liis personality triune, .... IHi 
his sympathy revealed only by 

Christianity, 132 

his personality lost in his law, . 146 

Gospels, tlieir common type, ■ . 49 
bear all the marks of truthful 

testimony 49 

synoptical, specific character of 
each, 50 

Gospel of Matthew, its specific 

character, 50 

of Mark, its specific character, . 60 
" Luke, " " . 60 

" John, " " . 50 

Gospels, apocryphal, presuppose 
the original and authentic, ... 63 

Government of God, evidences of, 32 

Hall, Professor, on the supernatu- 
ral as an induction of science, . 91 

Harmony between the natural and 
the supernatural , 84 

Heathen Do:^! in what sense aban- 
doned of God, 184 

an ideal preparation for Chris tiairi- 

ity, 184 

an outward preparation for Chris- 
tianity, 186 

a negative preparation for Chris- 
tianity, 187 

IIeracleon wrote a commentary 
on John's Gospel, 67 

Heretics corroborate thts testi- 
mony to the sacred writings, . . 66 

History testifies to the need of 
revelation, 99 

Historical proof of the divine 

existence, 16 

character of the New Testament, 47 

Hitchcock on transmutation of 

species, 92 

on the supernatural as an induc- 
tion of science 91 

Humanitarian activity the law of 

the Christian life, 158 

influence of Christianity, . , . 216 

Hume's argument against miracles 
answered, . r fT 



Humility of Christ not inconsist 
ent with his high claims, . . . 1]0 

IIUNTicii on relation of organism 
to life, 37 

Huxley on relation of organism to 

life, --.... 37 

admits the possibility of miracles, 87 
on transmutation of species, . . 92 

Ideal, moral, wanting in the Old 
World, 148 

of life, stoic compared with Chris- 
tian, 161 

moral of modern scepticism bor- 
rowed from Christianity, . . .164 
of the church imperfectly realized, 173 

Ideological distinguished from 

ontological, 21 

proof of the existence of God, . 19 

Immortality of the soul inferred 
from the divine personality, . . 34 
" " expectation of a future 

life 34 

of the soul relative, not absolute, 44 
" " not fully established 
without theaid of the supernatural, 4* 
an original and permanent en- 
dowment of the soul, .... 44 
of fame the pagan aspiration, . 204 

Imperfection of moral govern- 
ment in this woi'ld an argument 

for immortality, 43 

of the church anticipated by its 
Founder, 181 

liiPULSE needs to be supplemented 
by authority, 149 

Indestructibility of force an- 
other name for the abiding ener- 
gy of God, 134 

Individuality of character faith- 
fully preserved by the evangelists, 59 
exemplified in case of Peter, . . 59 

Infidelity a witness to the im- 
perfection of moral government 
here, 44 

Infinite, the idea of a necessity of 

human thought, 20 

the idea of, not merely negative, 20 
more a feeling than a concep- 
tion, 2f 



240 



INDEX. 



series of finite causes and effects 
inconceivable without God, . . 22 
Designer legitimately inferred 
from finite contrivances, ... 30 

Inspiration an indispensable 
sanction of Christian doctrine, . 127 

Intelligence, marks of in nature 
threefold, 26 

Interpretation of the facts of 
revelation must have a divine 
authority, 126 

Iken^us, his testimony to the 
Canon, 65 

Jesus the permanent miracle of 

human history, 105 

could not be deceived as to his 

own sinlessness, 107 

could not be a deceiver as to his 
own sinlessness, 108 

Jewish theocracy, need of, . . .194 

theocracy, origin of, 195 

and ethnic preparation for Chris- 
tianity, how combined, .... 200 
attacks upon Christianity, . . . 224 

John only could have written the 

Apocalypse, 61 

his Gospel, its design, etc., . . 50 
" " the complement, etc., 51 
" '* in harmony, etc., . . 51 
" " its profounder charac- 
ter, etc., 51 

Judaism no product of pre-existing 

ideas, 194 

unaccountable if not of divine 

origin, 194 

as a preparation for Christianity 
real rather than ideal, .... 196 
a direct preparation for Chris- 
tianity, 19? 

its prophetic character, .... 198 

Judgment begins at death, closes 
at the end of the world, .... 139 
its decisions spiritual, not legal, 
grounded on faitt, not on obe- 
dience, 140 

its decisions final, 141 

Justin Martyr, his testimony to 
the Goispels, 65 



Kant's moral argument for theex* 
istence of God, 31 

Language of the New Testament 
proves its genuineness, .... 47 

Latin versions of the New Testa- 
ment testify to the Canon, ... 69 

Law without a lawgiver a delusive 

conception, 25 

usurps the place of God's person- 
ality in men's tlioughts, .... 146 

Legendary theory of the origin 
of the Gospels untenable, . . . . 80 

Life, Christian, character of, . . 115 

spiritual, seated in the affections, 116 

" its manifestations, . . 116 

divine, eternal in its very nature, 117 

'* its relation to divine 

knowledge, 118 

its relation to right action, . . .119 
divine, not a form or result of 

human culture, 120 

religious, natural types of diverse, 120 
divine, manifests itself by its 

fruits, 122 

Christian, its defects do not dis- 
prove its reality, 123 

Christian, a single instance of re- 
veals the presence of a supernat- 
ural agency, .... o ... 123 
shortness of, makes future life 

necessary, '40 

its relation to the physical organ- 
ism, 37 

Limitations of the churcli antici- 
pated by its Founder, 181 

Literature, influence of Chris- 
tianity upon, 207 

Love, the soul of faith, 116 

to God brings us into harmony 
with all his creatures, 117 

Luke, design and specific character 
of his gospel, 50 

Mahometans, their attacks on 
Christianity, 221 

Man a religions being; this proved 
by his religious consciousness, . \i 
the representative, Ifi 



1 K r K T. 



241 



Mas, preparation for his advent in 
nature, - . . 29 

Marcion, a witness to Luke's Gos- 
pel, and ten of Paul's epistles, . 67 

Mark's Gospel, its design and spe- 
cific character, 60 

Martyrdom not justifiable, unless 
the soul is immortal, ...... 35 

Matter not eternal, but essentially 
dependent, .23 

Matthew's Gospel, its design and 
specific character, 60 

Microscopic animals, their use,. . 28 

Mind, not the result of organism, . 37 

Ministry, a constitutive element 
tf the church, 170 

Miracle, distinguished from Prod- 
is and the monstrous, .... 86 

&ot impossible, 87 

logically related to doctrine, . . 89 
and doctrine to be judged as a 
\vhole, not merely in detail, . . 89 

Miracles may be established by 

testimony, 87 

oJ Christ classified, 106 

WL'Ought by the apostles a part of 
tlve supernatural in Christianity, 113 

Miraculous element inseparable 
from the character and work of 

Christ, 82 

11^ nature, 86 

distingidshed from the supernat- 
ural, 86 

not to be verified by scientific tests, 89 

Monotheism more ancient than 
Polytheism, . 19 

Monstbous, the, distinguished 
from the miraculous, 86 

Moral proof of the divine exist- 
ence, 31 

government, evidences of, . . . 32 
ideal of modem scepticism bor- 
rowed from Christianity, ... 164 

Morality In man not spontaneous 
and instinctive, but consists in loy- 
iJty to duty and obedience to law, 145 

Mortality of man one of the chief 
sources of his misery, . . . . 203 

ls;uii<£B on the earlier Monotheism 
oftheVedft. 10 



MuRATORiAN fitigment on the 
canon, 68 

Mythical theory of origin of 
Christianity untenable, .... 77 

Nature of the soul an argument 
for its immortality, 35 

Natuual and supernatural, har- 
mony between them, 84 

religion distinguished from re- 
vealed, 104 

religion only a revelation of de- 
spair and death, 147 

religion, its sanctions too long 
delayed and too imperfectly rec- 
ognized, 148 

Nearness of God to his creatures 
the underlying truth of Panthe- 
ism, 131 

Neo-Platonists, their attacks on 
Christianity, 221 

New Testament dialect a com- 
pound of Greek, Hebrew, and 
Christian elements, 47 

Obedience to civil authority, its 
obligation and limits, 160 

Obstacles to the spread of Chris- 
tianity, 212 

Ontological distinguished from 

ideological, 21 

proof of the divine existence, . . 19 

Ordinances a constitutive ele- 
ment of the church, 169 

Organism the result, not the 
cause, of life, 37 

Origen quotes from all the canon* 
leal books, 69 

Origin ofthe idea of God, ... 16 

of Polytheism, .18 

" Pantheism, 18 

Order pervades nature, and re- 
veals the intelligence of the scien- 
tist 26 

Owen on transmutation of species, 05 

Pagan writers corroborate the 
testimony to the Canon, .... 06 
attacks on Christianity, .... 839 



242 



INDEX, 



PALBSTnrB, prodacts of, accu- 
rately reported by the evange- 
lists, 54 

Pak^tius disputed the authen- 
ticity of Plato's Phasdon, ... 67 

Pantheism, its origin, 18 

springs from the intellect, . . .131 
its underlying truth is the near- 
ness of God to his creatures. . . 131 

Pantheistic view of God's relation 

to the world 102 

attacks upon Christianity, . . .222 

Pastern's experiments in regard 
to spontaneous generation, . . .134 

Patriotism, its place in Chris- 
tianity, 160 

Paul's conversion not to be ac- 
counted for naturally or psycho- 
logically 74 

Perpetuity of Christianity does 
not imply perpetuity of any partic- 
ular church or creed, 232 

Personality of God an argument 
fortheimmortality of thesoul, . 34 
of God the underlying truth of 

Polytheism, 131 

of God triune, 132 

« lost in his law, .... 146 

Peshito, its testimony to the 
Canon, 68 

Pbteb, his character consistently 
portrayed, 69 

Ph^don of Plato, its genuineness 
disputed by Fanaetius, .... 67 

Philanthropic associations,their 
place in Christianity, 158 

Philanthropy, practical and self- 
denying, the law of the Christian 
Ufe, 158 

Pious fraud not admissible in the 
case of the New Testament writ- 
ings, 71 

Plato, authenticity of his Fhaedon 
disputed by Panaetius, 67 

Plutarch recognized the imper- 
fection of moral government in 
this world, 44 

Political accuracy of the evange- 
lists, 65 

PoLTTHEiaM, its origlii, .... 18 



PoLYi'HEisM springs from the 
heart ; its underlying truth, . . 131 

rosiTioN in life, providential, must 
be accepted, 15S 

Positive character of future 
awards, 142 

Positivism inconsistent, with its 
own principles, 103 

PosiTiviST view of God's relation 
to the world, 102 

Preparation for man's advent, . 29 

Probation terminates with pres- 
ent life, 141 

its unity confirmed by the analo- 
gies of nature, • 141 

Prodigy distinguished from mira- 
cle, 86 

Products of Palestine accurately 
reported by the evangelists, . . 54 

Prophecy, its general character, . 199 

Prophetic character of Judaism, 198 

Property, acquisition of, a duty, . 157 

Providence interpreted by re- 
demption, 135 

no place for in stoic philosophy, . 165 
doctrine of, for comfort, rather 
than for guidance, 136 

Providential position in life 
must be accepted, 155 

Public conscience formed by 
Christianity, 217 

Punishment not restorative, . . 142 

Qualities of nund and matter 
essentially different, 3i 

Rationalist view of God's rela- 
tion to nature, 101 

Realistic character of the Epis- 
tles, 127 

Reception of Christ by his con- 
temporaries, how explained, . .112 

Recreation, its legitimate place 
in the Christian life, . . . . . 159 

Redemption the key to Provi- 
dence, i'35 

Redemptive agency of Chris- 
tianity, how exerted, 136 

Religion, natural and revealed 
distinguished, 101 



IWBKT. 



348 



Religion, necessity of, reoognliea 
byComte, 103 

natural, confirmed and enforced 

by Christianity, 131 

natural, only a revelation of de- 
spair and death, 147 

natural, its sanctions too long de- 
layed, and too imperfectly recog- 
nized, 148 

the soul of morality, . . . 152, 161 

Eepentaxce the negative side of 
the Christian Life, 116 

Representative man, Christ the, 16 

Reserve of the evangelists, ... 127 

Restoration hereafter not re- 
vealed in Scripture, 143 

Results of living not recognized 
as retributions, 147 

Resurrection of Christ, no room 
for mistake or deception in regard 

to the fact, 72 

of Christ, the great proof of im- 
mortality, 139 

body, its relations to the present 
material body, 139 

Retributions of the future world 
positive in their nature, and end- 
less in their duration, 142 

Revealed religion distinguished 
firom natural, 104 

Revelation must have a histori- 
cal basis, 98 

would be needful, if man had not 

&llen, .....* 98 

still more needfhl in view of 

man's sinfulness^ 99 

diaracter of, not to be Judged h 
priori, 100 

Rites, symbolical, a constitutive 
element of the church, .... 169 

RiTTER on the decay of Roman civ- 
ilization, 191 

on the influence of Christianity, . 219 

Roman civilization, causes of its 
decline and corruption, .... 187 



Selfhood our, in its entireness, 
recognized and respected by 
CbiigtUuHjr, 153 



Seneca on compassion, .... 103 
on forgiveness, 103 

Seneca and Paul compare«3 in refer- 
ence to their teaching, .... 163 
advocated suicide, 191 

Sense of God's personality lost in 
his law, 146 

SiroRTNiiSS of humau life makes 
future life necessary, 40 

SiNLESSNESS of Christ, . . .107 

Scepticism modern, borrows lts> 
moral ideals from Christianity, . 164 

Social life regulated by Chris- 
tianity, 155 

Sovereignty and freedom, how 
harmonized by Christianity, . .138 

SPKNCERjHerbert, his testimony to 
the insufficiency of the natural, . 129 

Spontaneous generation, rejected 
by the highest s cientific authority , 1 3-1 

Spread of any religion no proof of 
its divinity, 211 

Stoic ideal of life compared with 

Christian, Itl 

philosophy leaves no room for 

Providence, 162 

doctrine of human equality differs 
from Christian, lr!4 

Strauss rejects the idea that 
Christ's apparent death was but a 
swoon, 74 

Structure of man differs from 
that of the gorilla, " 

Supernatural element insepara- 
ble from the character and work 

of Christ, , . oi 

idea of, defined, 84 

distinguished from miraculous, . 56 
its harmony with the natural, . 84 
idea of, in analogy with common 

experience, 85 

as a fact, apart from Christianity, 90 
its occurrence an induction of 

science, 91 

inseparable from Christianity, . 105 
works ofChristbut natural to hira, 106 
the, restored, not disturbed, the 

order of the world, 113 

element in the doctrines of Chris- 
tianity, IK 



244 



ItTDMX. 



Sympaiht of Qod revealed only 
by Christiftnity, 132 

Tacitus, his testimony to Chris- 
tianity, 78 

Teleological proof of the divine 
existence, 25 

Teller rejects the Idea that 
Christ's apparent death was but a 
swoon, 73 

Tertullian, his witness to the 
Canon of Scripture, 65 

Testimony valid evidence of the 

miraculous, 87 

^ > the supernatural as a legiti- 
r, ate induction of science, ... 91 

It icoCRACY Jewish, need of, . . 194 
urigiu of, 195 

Thought, not a product of the 
h^ain, 37 

Transmutation of species cannot 

h ". established, 92 

<»4 species, scientific testimony 
f\^;ainstit, 92 

Tkith of Christianity witnessed 
by the causes which favored its 
c^ffusion, 213 

(JNOAUSBD Being, an, above our 
(M^nception, but not contrary to 
onr reason, . 24 



Undesighbd ooinddenoefl, in tiM 
different books of the New Testa* 
ment; their significance, ... 80 

Unity of design In nature, ... 29 
not to be afiirmed of the soul's 

essence, 86 

of consciousness, a necessary 

truth, 86 

of Christian doctrine, 180 

Utility, an end in nature, reveal* 
ing the intelligence of the mech- 
anician, 27 

Universality of the church, in 
adaptation and in fact, .... 180 

Valentinus a witness for John's 
Grospel, 67 

Value of the Christian ohorch, . 174 

Variations in nature, tendency 
to, counteracted by tendency to 
reversion, 94 

Vegetable life supported by inor- 
ganic matter, 28 

Versions early, of the New Testa* 
ment, bear witness to its historical 
character, 68 

Victory of Christianity over Bo- 
man civilization, 214 

over northern barbarism, . . . 214 
over its own corruptions, . . . 215 

Voluntary associations, their re- 
lation to the church, US 

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